Preamble

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PETITION

Shops Bill

Mr. Frank Cook: I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me leave to present a petition from constituents of mine who are gravely distressed by detailed reports of the Government's proposals to withdraw the regulations relating to trading on Sundays.
This petition is not the result of the standard reflex reaction of the traditional Sabbatarian school of philosophy—not a bit of it. Rather is it based on a broad and genuine concern for the welfare of the community, the maintenance of accepted and agreed conditions of work and the protection of the family unit.
The petition was entrusted to me for presenatation by the Rev. Tony Bell of St. James's parish in Hardwick, the Rev. Richard Martin of St. John's parish in Grindon and St. James's parish in Thorpe Thewles and the Rev. Peter Hirst of St. Aidan's parish in Billingham. They express their opposiion to the provision for unlimited Sunday trading in the Shops Bill that is currently before Parliament, recognising that Sunday has special characteristics as a day of rest, recreation and worship for the benefit of our family and community life. They ask that
your honourable House do maintain legal limitations on Sunday trading to ensure that the special character of Sunday be protected.

To lie upon the Table.

Employment Rights

Mr. John Evans: I beg to move,
That this House condemns Her Majesty's Government, whose economic, social and anti-trade union policies have, since 1979, tripled unemployment and placed the greatest burdens on those least able to bear them, particularly women, young persons and the low paid, through the reduction of internationally agreed minimum legislative standards ensuring basic social, human and employment rights for Britain's workforce; deplores the increasing bitterness and frustration that characterises Britain's industrial relations, exacerbated by the Government's anti-trade union legislation, which has thrown considerable doubt on basic trade union rights whilst encouraging the worst possible management practices, as evident in the News International dispute at Wapping; and calls upon the Government to reverse these disastrous policies of confrontation and attacks upon Britain's workers and their trade unions, which have created so much poverty and strife throughout Great Britain, and replace them with a policy of economic expansion and conciliation and co-operation between employers, trade unions and the Government, based upon a positive framework of rights for Britain's workforce.

Mr. Alan Howarth: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Eventually, at 7 o'clock last night, I was able to obtain from the Table Office a copy of the motion that the hon. Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) invites us to debate this morning. At 7 o'clock last night the Table Office did not have it printed; it was available only as a typescript copy.
It seems to me to be neither courteous nor for the convenience of the House that the terms of a motion that we are to debate should be tabled at such a very late stage. The motion is lengthy and specific and deals with concrete points. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether it is in order that it should be tabled at such a very late stage for debate this morning.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not think that I need any help. The motion is in order. Due notice was given, although it is generally for the convenience of the House to have a little longer notice of motions like this so that we can all see exactly what the debate is to be about.

Mr. Skinner: I wish to point out to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the House—

Mr. Howarth: Is it a point of order?

Mr. Skinner: Yes, it is a point of order, in view of what Mr. Speaker has had to say. Mr. Speaker made specific reference to the fact that it would be for the convenience of the House if these motions were tabled earlier. There are countless occasions when this Government table motions within a few minutes—not at 7 o'clock but a few minutes before the rising of the House. There have also been a few occasions when the Government have demanded on the same day a switch from Committee stage to Report stage and we have had to table manuscript amendments within an hour — [Interruption]—so the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) wants to talk to his Front Bench.

Mr. Frank Cook: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We do not want to take time out of this debate. Does the hon. Gentleman want to be helpful?

Mr. Cook: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether it would have been helpful to those who


are expressing their distress, like the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt), who is doing it so vociferously at this moment, if my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens North (Mr. Evans) had held a press conference before putting his motion on the Order Paper.

Mr. Speaker: This sounds like a really good Friday morning. I shall answer the point of order raised by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). What I have said about the need for adequate notice applies equally to the Front Benches as to the Back Benches. I call Mr. John Evans.

Mr. Evans: I am grateful Mr. Speaker. With respect, may I point out to the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) who raised the point of order, that I did seek the guidance of the Table Office on what the procedures were. They advised me, and I followed the rules of the House to the letter. May I also point out to the hon. Member that I tabled the title of the motion calling attention to employment rights some nine days ago. Surely the hon. Member had the wit to read what the subject of the debate would be and thus appreciate precisely what the topic would be. I accept your point, Mr. Speaker, that we have spent too long on this rather ridiculous point of order.
Although I am delighted to have the opportunity to sponsor a debate about these most important issues that are facing us, I am bound to draw attention to the fact that once again the Minister for Employment in not in attendance for a major debate on employment and employment rights. One is left with the feeling that Cabinet Ministers simply never stop running away and are only too happy to leave such debates to Parliamentary Under-Secretaries. However, I acknowledge the presence of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment.
Unemployment is the greatest issue facing our nation and it is right that the House should examine the question of mass unemployment. It is right that the House should examine the Government's treatment of the problems of unemployment and their economic and social policies which have created unemployment. It is also important that the House should review the Government's attack on the disadvantaged, an attack which has taken place over the past six years on women, young children and all those who are, unfortunately, reduced to claiming social security benefits. At this point it is most important that the House should examine the Government's attack on trade unionists and their organisations. It is important that we ensure that full examination is given to those aspects of Government legislation that have created the situation in Wapping, which is a disgrace to an industrial society.
I start by dealing with the issues in reverse order to that in which I outlined them and begin with the Government's attack on trade unionists and their organisations. It is an attack which has been mounted over the past six years. At the outset may I declare an interest in this subject as a sponsored member fo the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. I am a lifelong member of that organisation and I am inordinately proud to belong to it.

Mr. Peter Thurnham: Does the hon. Member care to say whether he thinks the three-month strike by the AUEW in 1979 helped the employment prospects of its members?

Mr. Evans: To be perfectly frank, I do not recall a three-month strike in 1979. Perhaps if the hon. Gentleman catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, he will have the opportunity to remind the House of that strike. Suffice it to say that any industrial dispute involving members of the AUEW is always in the interests of those workers. The AUEW's record will stand comparison with any organisation to which the hon. Member may wish to refer.
Since 1979, it has been central to the Tory Government's policy to break, or to cripple, the power and the influence of the trade union movement. That power has been built up over many years, often at the behest and support of successive Governments. Until the present Government came to power, every other Government had recognised that the trade union movement should, by rights, have a powerful part to play in the nation's affairs. When one examines the history of the past six years, one recognises that the anti-trade union legislation and the mass unemployment created by the Government are inextricably linked. A major part of the Tory attack on the British working people has been to attack their institutions and to attack working people's ability to defend themselves, their jobs and their standard of living.
Over the past six years there have been four major pieces of legislation that have had a detrimental effect on the trade union movement. The first attack was the disgraceful Social Security Act 1980, which deducted £15 a week, subsequently uprated to £16 a week, from the social security benefit of the family of any individual on strike. That was the first stage of the Tory attack. That legislation applied to unions, such as the mineworkers union in their year-long struggle with the Government. That union had never paid any strike benefit but, nevertheless, the families of the striking miners and other individuals were denied £16 from their pittance of benefit.
Following the Social Security Act 1980 there came the Employment Act 1980. I had the privilege as acting as Opposition Whip during its stages in Committee and through the House. This Act mounted the attack on the closed shop and restricted the right to picket. It restricted secondary action in furtherance of a trade dispute. That Act has created the nightmarish situation that now exists at Wapping. A ruthless employer, Mr. Murdoch, of News International, has been able to use the law in a way which, I submit, the House never intended.
The Secretary of State at that time was the right hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Prior) and the law that he put on the statute book has been subsequently amended, altered and shaped by the judges and the legal profession so as to allow what was never intended by section 17 of the Act. It has allowed Mr. Murdoch and other employers to construct a chain of limited companies to create a legal fiction of separation. If, at company A the work or the business is being interrupted by a perfectly legitimate industrial dispute, the law on secondary action can be brought into play at company X although it is owned and operated by the same employer, because a chain of small private limited companies have been erected between them, even though the same work is being done on behalf of the same employer. The workers in that context have been denied their job opportunities and denied their work. Subsequently they have been denied their rights to such things as redundancy payment and the right to claim unfair dismissal and to take such claims to a tribunal. I am sure no decent citizen would attempt morally to justify the scenario that exists at Wapping.
What was intended by the Employment Act 1980? I remind the House that the Committee considering the Bill met on 32 occasions for almost 100 hours. I remind the House that there was no guillotine on the Bill. Indeed, there was no suggestion that the guillotine should be applied to the Bill. We went through the Bill clause by clause, line by line, and examined every aspect of the Government's intentions in that Act.
The Committee spent no fewer than five sittings on clause 14—subsequently clause 15—on secondary picketing. The Solicitor-General was in attendance for long stretches of our debates on clause 14 and our attempts to define and bring out into the open the position in relation to secondary picketing. The Committee never discussed secondary action.
On 19 February—the ninth sitting of the Committee—the Government published a consultation document on secondary action. The Committee had therefore sat for quite some time before the document was produced. The Committee spent some time deliberating whether it should discuss clause 14 on secondary picketing without seeing whether the Government intended to do anything about secondary action. On 18 March, at the 24th sitting, my hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Poplar (Mr. Mikardo) sought guidance from the Chair and asked:
Would it be in order for me to seek to move a change in the order in which we are considering the clauses in order to defer our consideration of clause 14 and deal with some other clauses in the meanwhile?
May I, with your kind indulgence, Mr. Goodhew, explain the thought behind that request? Clause 14 covers very much the same ground as the Government's working paper. Indeed, the clause and the working paper are not merely interlinked but are intertwined. It will be impossible to discuss clause 14 without also discussing the working paper." —[Official Report Standing Committee A, 18 March 1980; c. 1287.]
The Chairman accepted a motion, which my hon. Friend moved, to postpone consideration of clause 14 until after consideration of new clauses. The Government resisted that motion and, after a short debate, and in view of what the Chairman said, my hon. Friend withdrew his motion. In retrospect, we should probably not have withdrawn it but pursued the important point that any proposals on secondary action should have been examined in Committee.
On Report, the Government produced the blockbuster new clause 1 which covered no fewer than eight paragraphs and 54 lines. It comprised the most monstrous and complex legal jargon which nobody understood at the time, not even the Secretary of State. During the debate in the new clause on 17 April 1980, I said:
In this case the Secretary of State frankly admitted that there was little knowledge in Parliament of what the complex clause actually meant. We must all sit back and wait and go through goodness knows how many industrial disputes before the judges finally determined what the clause means."—[Official Report, 17 April 1980; Vol. 982, c. 1546.]
In an intervention to the Secretary of State at column 1500 I asked him to define what the new clause meant, and he admitted that we would have to wait until the issue had been tested in the courts. We now know how the judges have interpreted it. The debate on secondary action at that time related to a judgment by the House of Lords in the Express Newspapers v. MacShane case, in which the House of Lords judgment stated clearly that secondary action under the 1974 Act was subjective and that, as long as the individual felt that he was acting in furtherance of

a trade dispute that his members were involved in, there was no question of any action being taken against him. The All England Law Reports states:
On the ordinary and natural meaning of s. 13(1) of the 1974 Act, an act was done 'in … furtherance of a trade dispute', and that the person doing that act was accordingly protected by s. 13 against an action for tort, if he honestly believed that the act might further the cause of those taking part in the dispute … the test of whether the act was done in furtherance of a trade dispute was a subjective one, and it was not necessary for the person doing the act to prove that it was reasonably capable of achieving his object. Since the evidence clearly established that the defendants honestly and reasonably believed that the action taken was fairly 'in … furtherance of a trade dispute', it followed (Lord Wilberforce, applying an objective test, concurring) that the appeal would be allowed and the injunctions discharged".
Because of that judgment, the Government thought that secondary action had to be defined. The Secretary of State said:
The MacShane judgment appears to affirm that statute law gives to trade unions virtually unlimited authority to damage whomsoever they choose, as much as they choose, without fear of penalty, if, in their judgment—which no court may question—such action seems to be in their interests. In effect, the last as it now stands is a licence to spread industrial action far and wide beyond the original dispute, putting at risk the jobs and businesses of people who are in no way connected with it. No responsible Government could allow the law to remain in that state, and I would suggest that that view must also apply to the Opposition.
It is important to recognise the background to that debate. The Secretary of State was saying that, because of the House of Lords judgment two months before, the Act had been defined in a way that the Secretary of State in 1974 had never intended.
On Report, The Secretary of State confirmed our belief that the law was being interpreted quite differently from what was intended when he said:
There is a deep-rooted trade union tradition of industrial action to prevent goods from being supplied to or from an employer in dispute. The Donovan commission acknowledged that, as did the Court of Appeal in developing the test of remoteness. The new clause recognises this tradition where secondary action is employed because the primary action is only partially effective. However, it withdraws immunity from secondary action if it is used only as a vehicle for spreading the disruptive effects of industrial action beyond those who are actively supplying goods to or receiving goods from the employer in dispute during the dispute.
The principle underlying the clause is that secondary action is justifiable only to the extent that it is used to put direct pressure on the employer in dispute." —[Official Report, 17 April 1980; Vol. 982, c. 1488–89.]
I submit that that is precisely what the trade unions at Wapping are intending to do and what the then Secretary of State implied was allowable under the new clause but which the courts have developed so that it is not allowed. Employees now find that their jobs are literally removed from under their noses and, because of the courts' interpretation of the 1980 Act, they have no claim or remedy against their employers.
If the Government had any honesty, they would restore to section 17 of the 1980 Act the meaning that it was thought to have when the Secretary of State put it through the House. The climate changed when the former Secretary of State for Employment was moved from office and passed to the vastness of Northern Ireland. We were then privileged to have the presence of the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) as the new Secretary of State.

Mr. Eric Forth: Hear, hear.

Mr. Evans: The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire, (Mr. Forth) says "Hear, hear," and reveals the feeling on the Tory Benches for the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Member for Chingford and the Prime Minister have constantly urged employers, time after time, to use the Tory Acts to bring the employees to heel. No one can seriously question that statement, as on innumerable occasions and speeches both the Prime Minister and the right hon. Gentleman used those expressions.
The right hon. Member for Chingford introduced the Employment Act 1982. That was a really vicious Act clearly intended to further shackle the trade union movement and to promote the concept of non-unionism. The then Secretary of State for Employment boasted that the Act that he was putting on the statute book was meant to promote non-trade unionism. He introduced what became known as the "scabs' charter" in which anyone who could prove that a job had been lost because of pressure from a trade union could sue the employer and join the trade union in the action, which could result in payments in excess of £30,000 to the individual for loss of employment.
Tory Members should study what happened since the Employment Act 1982 went on the statute book. Notwithstanding the hysterical outpourings from the former Secretary of State, Tory Members would find that the number of cases that have gone to tribunal under the 1982 Act can be counted on the fingers of two hands. None of them have been awarded anything like the level of compensation that the former Secretary of State provided.
That Act also substantially narrowed the definitions of the trade dispute to closely defined industrial issues. It created a situation in which trade unions could be fined for the so-called unlawful acts of their officers to the extent that unions with membership in excess of 100,000 could be fined £250,000 for any acts that were defined as unlawful. The trade union movement is smarter than that and few cases have appeared before the courts.
However, the 1982 Act tried to create an uncertain climate. The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Chingford, was also the architect of the Trade Union Act 1984. The purpose of that Act was largely to restrict the political rights of trade unions and to attempt to bankrupt the Labour party.

Mr. Don Dixon: Does my hon. Friend recall, in relation to the 1982 Act, that sections 1 and 2 introduced retrospective payments from 1974 to 1981 for the free-riders working in closed shops who happened to lose their jobs? Professor Jennard from Strathclyde university went round the country trying to find 400 free-riders to pay out £2 million in retrospectve payments that had been set to one side for free-riders during that period.

Mr. Skinner: All trade unionists could do with some of that.

Mr. Evans: I am grateful for my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon) for making that important point. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) rightly said, many in the trade union movement would expect similar acts of retrospection to ensure that those who were loyal to the trade union movement in days of struggle would be treated in the same way as the Tory party treated the free-loaders and blacklegs.
An interesting point about the Trade Union Act 1984 is that it has largely blown up in the face of the Tory party. The present situation is that of the unions with political funds, all 33 that have balloted their membership have returned yes votes with massive majorities in favour of keeping those funds. Only four unions await a result and it is confidently expected that during the next two weeks they will also declare a yes vote with huge majorities for the maintenance of their political funds. It is also interesting that the Act, which was intended as a blow to the trade union and Labour movement, has caused one union that previously did not have a political fund to ballot its members and subsequently to create one. It is confidently expected that many other unions that do not have political funds but are currently balloting their members will establish such funds. As some hon. Members pointed out at the time, that legislation will perform wonders in politicising the membership of the trade unions and I am pleased that that result is being achieved.

Dr. M. S. Miller: I ask my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) not to leave this point too quickly. My hon. Friend should extend our thanks to the Government for making the situation clear, but he should also stress that the situation is not quite what the Government expected.

Mr. Evans: At the outset I said that the Trade Union Act 1984 was intended to break the political powers of the trade union movement and to bankrupt the Labour party. That Act has blown up in the Government's face because of the splendid work that has been done by the trade union movement and in particular by the trade union coordinating committee. That exercise has politicised trade unionists the length and breadth of the country and that can only be beneficial to us, particularly when we come to the next general election, as Tory Members are fond of quoting at length that almost one-third of trade unionists voted for them at the last election.

Mr. Geoffrey Dickens: Hear hear. We would not be here now if they had not voted for us.

Mr. Evans: The trade unionists will not be voting for Tory Members at the next election. That is certain.
One of the reasons why trade unionists will not vote for the Tories at the next election is that the Prime Minister continues to threaten to introduce further anti-trade union legislation. The Government are seeking to deny workers the right to combine to protect themselves and promote their interests. The Government are doing that because they allege that that will improve the operation of the labour market and alter the balance of power in favour of the employers. Those are favourite quotes from Cabinet Ministers and in particular from the Prime Minister. In other words, the Government's policies are in favour of market forces that would dominate and rule our lives.
The Government have carried out many measures to promote market forces. They have privatised public enterprise and services. They have made massive cuts in public expenditure, capital expenditure, infrastructure projects, and in current expenditure, and such things as pensions and supplementary benefits. The Government have also made uncivilised attacks on the disadvantaged. One attack is going through the House at present in the form of the Social Security Bill.

Mr. Forth: rose—

Mr. Evans: I shall give way shortly, but I want to finish my point.
Cuts in housing benefit will reduce the income of millions of people and no fewer than 500,000 people in this country will lose more than £5 a week. The severe weather payments are a national scandal and the Government's attacks on pensioners ad claimants have been a disgrace. We have also seen the diminishing of women's rights in employment. They have been denied the primary right of maternity benefit for which women fought for generations. This Government, led by the Prime Minister, have reduced those rights. The Wages Bill, which is currently in Committee, is attacking the young people in our society. Millions of youngsters will suffer as a result of that Act reaching the statute book and they will see their pittance of a weekly income substantially reduced.
If the Government had increased the youth training scheme allowance in line with inflation, it would now probably be £8 or £10 more than it is. There is not much point in having a one-year, two-year or even three-year scheme, if at the end of that period the youngsters are simply dumped back into the unemployment queues.

Mr. Forth: At the outset of the hon. Gentleman's catalogue of inaccuracies he claimed that public expenditure had been slashed, grossly reduced, or some such thing. Will he remind the House of the proportion of gross national product that was taken up by public expenditure in 1979 and contrast it with the proportion that is devoted to public expenditure this year? In other words, will he substantiate the claim that there has been a cut in public expenditure?

Mr. Evans: I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman's question immediately. The major reason for the Government's un-Christian attack on the under-privileged is the size of the unemployment bill, which is the product of massive unemployment. That bill is just short of £20 billion this year. Unemployment is the reason for the massive increase in public expenditure since 1979. Unemployment has trebled since 1979. If the hon. Gentleman cannot understand that, it is time that he took up some other profession.
Apart from those considerations, unemployment is a colossal and incredible waste of money and human resources. Virtually all the wealth that has been obtained from the North sea has been poured down the drain of mass unemployment. That is one of the greatest crimes that this Tory Government have committed against our society. Despite the Government's rhetoric about the wonders of the free market, unemployment continues to escalate. It appears to be never-ending, despite all the Government's claims and all the bleatings and pleadings that we hear from Conservative Members.

Mr. James Lamond: And there are all the fiddles as well.

Mr. Evans: Indeed. There are now no fewer than 3·4 million benefit claimants, which is the euphemism that is used. However, that does not tell us how many are out of work. That is the fiddle that has continued for the past six years or so. As unemployment increases, so does the benefits bill, and that is why the Government have had to cut the value of the benefits that are paid to the

unemployed. It is worth recalling the theft of the six month wage-related unemployment benefit, for which workers have paid. It cannot be regarded as a benefit that the Government provided and then withdrew. Workers paid for benefit through their national insurance contributions.
As all my hon. Friends are only too well aware, the Government fiddle continually with the unemployment figures. It was announced two weeks ago that about 60,000 unemployed would be taken off the register by a further judicious fiddling of the figures. I am pleased that the Minister for Employment has just entered the Chamber. I am pleased to welcome the chief fiddler to our debate.

Mr. Michael Foot: The second fiddle.

Mr. Evans: The Government decided to include those in the armed forces and the self-employed as being employed. That enabled the percentage of unemployed to be reduced at a stroke from 13·1 per cent. to 12·4 per cent. That is virtually unbelievable. I should like to know how many unemployed self-employed persons will be counted as being unemployed. If the employed self-employed are to be included in the employment total, presumably the Government will be prepared to include the self-employed unemployed in the unemployment total. It seems that the Minister for Employment does not understand the question.
Everyone in the House is only too well aware that the Government's policies over the past six years have created massive and almost uncontrollable unemployment in our society.

The Paymaster-General and Minister for Employment (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will give me a definition of the unemployed self-employed. When someone is unemployed and looking for work, how does he know whether he is an unemployed self-employed person or an unemployed employee? When we assess the percentage of unemployment, we need to compare the number of people who are working with the number who are not, who are receiving benefit and who are available for work. One side of the equation must be those who are at work, which plainly means those who are working for employers as well as those who are working for themselves and those who are engaged in the armed forces.

Mr. Evans: I am grateful to the Minister. I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman and I will read with great interest the intervention that he has just made to try to ascertain what it means. I am sure that many of us will go to many parts of Britain in our effort to find out what is meant by the definition of unemployed self-employed. It seems that the Government have no difficulty in counting the employed self-employed in employment totals. That is a measure of the fiddle that the Government are operating and perpetrating on the British people.
There are so many ways in which the Government have contributed to increasing the level of unemployment, and it would be perverse of me to go through them all. I shall mention a decision of the Government in 1980 which allowed the pound to rise to £2·40 to the dollar, which had a devastating effect on wide stretches of British industry. They tried to cope while the pound stood at that level against the dollar and they found it impossible. The effect


was devastating on so many British companies. Many of them went out of business because of that act of folly. Later on the value of sterling fell to £1·05 or £1·03 against the dollar and the Government did not intervene. That served to compound their incompetence and folly.
That is the main thrust of the argument of the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), who, in evidence which was quoted in The Guardian yesterday, called for an attack upon Treasury power. The article states:
The creation of a powerful Cabinet committee to overcome the influence of the Treasury on industrial strategy was demanded last night by Mr. Michael Heseltine, the former Defence Secretary.
The right hon. Gentleman should know better than anyone about the powers of the Treasury. He is a former Secretary of State of two of the greatest spending Departments, the Ministry of Defence and the Department of the Environment. He is denouncing the Treasury in the most vigorous terms for being responsible for much of the decline of British industry. In describing the control that the Treasury has, he said:
It is like in commercial terms allowing finance directors to run a company. The books will add up but there won't be many sales.
I could not think of a better description of the British economy that has been created by the Government's act of folly.
We have seen slashing attacks on public expenditure—

Mr. Richard Holt: The hon. Gentleman has said that when sterling was standing at £2·40 against the dollar many British companies went out of business. Might I inquire of him which companies suffered that fate? Can he name one? While he is reflecting on that, does he recall that General Motors' first investment in Britain came when the pound-dollar parity was £1 to slightly in excess of $4.

Mr. Evans: I have no doubt that during the next few days I shall be receiving quite a few letters that will answer the hon. Gentleman's question. I am sure that they will contain the names and addresses of many such firms, especially small firms, throughout the country. They will set out the many businesses that had to cease trading during the time when sterling stood at £2·40 against the dollar.

Mr. Holt: The hon. Gentleman cannot answer the question.

Mr. Evans: The reduction in public expenditure—

Mr. Holt: The hon. Gentleman cannot answer the question.

Mr. Evans: We have seen cuts in bus grants and the subsequent collapse of bus sales. Local authority housing allocations have been cut, with the result that the backlog of housing repairs stands at about £20 billion. There have been cuts in local authority road maintenance programes and the roads of Britain are falling to pieces. There have been cuts in the nationalised industries' programmes and enormous problems are building up for our society. The decision to cut public expenditure programmes has given a further twist to the unemployment spiral. Every decision not to intervene because of the doctrine of market forces has produced an additional twist to the spiral of unemployment. Unemployment continues to rise, and it

will do so remorselessly. Employment Ministers wring their hands and make statement after statement about unemployment flattening out, hopeful signs, expected employment rises, levelling off and signs that next year will be better. There are statements of good intentions time after time, but nothing concrete is done to bring to an end the remorseless spiral of unemployment.
Once prosperous regions, cities and towns now suffer from mass unemployment. They have been reduced to such an extent that they now qualify for grants from the EEC's regional and social funds—that is, they would qualify for grants if there were money available for those grants.
More than 7,000 people are out of work in St. Helens, North, which was once one of our great and prosperous northern towns, and almost 50 per cent. of them have been out of work for more than 12 months. Skilled craftsmen over 45 who have given a lifetime of service to Britain ask me at my surgeries, "Will we ever get a job again?" I can only reply, "Not as long as the Conservative party is in office carrying out these policies."

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. David Trippier): The hon. Gentleman seems to suggest that, if the Labour party were elected to office, it would be relatively easy either to hold the increase in unemployment or to decrease it. Why did the Labour party manifestly fail to do that the last time it was in power, when unemployment went substantially beyond the 1 million point to which the hon. Gentleman wants us to return? When unemployment more than doubled he manifestly failed to do anything about it.

Mr. Evans: I hope that, on reflection, the hon. Gentleman will withdraw that statement. I did not say that the next Labour Government would find it easy. In fact, the next Labour Government will find it dreadfully difficult, given the nightmare that the Conservative Govnerment will leave behind them, to get people back to work.

Mr. Dickens: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Evans: I shall not give way.

Mr. Dickens: The hon. Gentleman is wise.

Mr. Evans: I give way.

Mr. Dickens: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me this opportunity. As we are talking about high levels of unemployment, will the hon. Gentleman tell the House what methods the Labour party would employ to reduce unemployment which have not been tried and tried again, and failed on every occasion? In every unemployment debate, we get the same old answers and solutions that have failed time and time again. We get no new ideas.

Mr. Evans: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not expect me to say that we shall launch a series of tea dancing classes—[Interruption.] Yes, it is cheap, because the hon. Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth (Mr. Dickens) makes cheap remarks. Under the last Labour Government, 500,000 more people were employed in 1979 than in 1974. There are now 2 million fewer people working than in 1979. If the Labour Government had used the same system of statistics as the Conservative Government are using, unemployment would have been less than 900,000 in 1979. That is the


truth. The last Labour Government proved conclusively that a Government who were concerned and determined would create employment. Every hon. Member, including members of Centre Forward, the previous Tory Prime Minister and Lord Stockton, have made it clear on innumerable occasions that unemployment can be conquered—

Mr. Dickens: How?

Mr. Evans: By Government action. The Government are out of step with everyone. The chambers of commerce are calling for programmes to tackle unemployment. The CBI and trade associations, including those in the construction industry, are calling for a programme of public works to tackle unemployment. The Tory wets, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), the TUC and the Labour party—everyone, bar the Government—are attacking the Government and calling for a programme of public works.
In the interview the Prime Minister gave a fortnight ago for the CBI magazine, she wrung her hands and said that Governments can create only artificial jobs. I remind the Prime Minister and Tory Members that there is nothing artificial about the unemployment they have created. It is massive and dreadful.
The greatest employment right of all is the right to work. That right has been denied to more than 3 million of our citizens. The Government are responsible. They have taken away that right to work. The Prime Minister's political epitaph will be "The Prime Minister for Unemployment". The Government stand condemned. If Conservative Members are so anxious to know what a Labour Government would do, they should resign. Hold an election and we will show them what we will do.

Mr. Nigel Forman: I begin by paying a small tribute to the hon. Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) for introducing this important subject, because it gives the House a useful opportunity to debate what is probably the cluster of the most central issues of concern to politicians. As it is Friday we can debate these matters at some leisure, in contrast to the more hectic mid-week.

Mr. Frank Cook: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, in complimenting my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helen's, North (Mr. Evans) on giving the House "a useful opportunity", he is effectively rebutting the specious and bogus point of order raised by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth)?

Mr. Forman: I see no necessary contradiction between my suitably gallant remarks, which are in danger of becoming less gallant if the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) continues in that vein, and the wise observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth).
That is the extent of the congratulations that I extend to the hon. Member for St. Helens, North. His long and almost hysterical motion seems to be almost entirely wrong. Conservative Members have asked him what a future Labour Government might be able to do. Has he considered this simple point? He supports a party which appears to be committed to massive increases in public spending—according to recent calculations it will be £24 billion extra in total. Will that expenditure be any

more in the interests of genuine employment than it was the last time the Labour party went down this route between 1974 and 1976? As all hon. Members will recall, it ended sadly and ignominiously in recourse to the International Monetary Fund.
I do not believe that the Labour party's solutions are credible. I am sure that is one of the main reasons why the party is languishing as it is.

Mr. Sydney Chapman: Obviously, Opposition spokesmen will say during today's debate that more should be spent on capital investment programmes. Does my hon. Friend agree that if that point is made it should be put in the context of capital investment in Britain last year, when it was at the record high level in real terms of £55 billion?

Mr. Forman: I accept the point that my hon. Friend has made so well. He underlines the fact that capital investment should be correctly and profitably made. The great bulk of that investment is in the private sector. Conservative Members make no apology for that. There is a role for both the public and the private sector to play in these matters. It is important for the House to realise that just because investment in the private sector has increased, it should not be derided. It is every bit as important as public sector investment, and it produces jobs.
I stress that in the past six or seven years the Government have not been, and are not now, anti-trade union. They are against the mindless and self-defeating militancy of a minority of trade unionists and their leaders who do not know what is in their own best interests, let alone the best interests of the country.

Mr. Dickens: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Forman: I should prefer to continue, if I may.
The Government legislation of 1980, 1982 and 1984 enhanced the power for ordinary trade union members. Those three stages, so far, of our trade union legislation have improved the balance between employers and employees and between trade union leaders and their members. I remind the Opposition, who may disagree with me, that opinion polls have consistently shown that the general public, including ordinary trade union members, have taken the view time and time again that trade unions in the past, especially in the 1970s, had too much power, not only for their own good, but for that of Britain. It was necessary and timely that the balance should be rectified.
The motion refers essentially to the central problem of unemployment, and it is to that that I want to address the brunt of my remarks. It needs to be pointed out, when the House is understandably concerned about unemployment, that on the other side of the equation—employment—we have seen some satisfactory progress since the depth of the recession. It is notable that, however one calculates these matters, the increase in employment, including some assessment for part-time equivalents, since March 1983, has been about 700,000 new jobs. I am sure that all Conservative Members share the deep concern about the unemployment which still exists in spite of the increase in employment. If there is one area—

Mr. Martin J. O'Neill: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It was reported in the Daily Mail yesterday that a statement is to be announced this morning on the decision of the privatisation of Vickers. Is there any indication as to when—

Mr. Dickens: It is on the Annunciator.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): Yes, there is to be a statement.

Mr. Alan Williams: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not ludicrous that a statement of this importance will be made to a nearly empty House on a Friday morning when many of those Members with a deep concern in the matter are not able to be here because they were not aware that the issue was to be raised today? Is it possible for you to use your good offices? We made representations to the Government through the usual channels. We asked them to defer this until next week so that all hon. Members with an interest could hear the statement and take part in the questioning, instead of which the Government have insisted on dragooning it through.

Mr. Dixon: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is a disgrace that a statement is to be made this morning about Vickers when there is an early-day motion on the Order Paper on this subject signed by 101 Tory Members, tabled by the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Franks), who will unfortunately not be in his seat after the next general election. However, he should be told of this sort of thing. Is it not the biggest rip-off of the lot when the Government have invested £200 million in—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must not pursue that argument. He must raise a point of order with the Chair.

Mr. Dixon: Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am trying to emphasise the importance of this statement. We gave £200 million being given to Trafalgar House, which is important to the 101 hon. Members—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must pursue the argument of whether it is in order for a statement to be made.

Mr. Skinner: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. There is an additional point. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) has said, the statement is being made on a Friday, when many hon. Members are absent. He implied that some people could not get here—I believe that they ought to be here—but I also believe that the practice of statements being made on a Friday should be investigated by the appropriate authority. The Government wanted to get the Tory Members who have been involved in signing the motion, away from the House, in particular the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Franks), who has actively promoted the Trafalgar House scheme with the resultant loss of several thousand jobs in his own constituency. I have no doubt that he will have to pay for that at the next election. However, I believe that that is the reason why the Government have wangled it in this fashion today.

Mr. Gregor MacKenzie: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am less than happy that any statement of consequence should be made on a Friday. I knew nothing of this statement until the point of order was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill). It was not on the board when I came in and it was not on the television

Annunciator. It has obviously been the subject of some conflict between the Labour Front Bench and the Government Front Bench. When we came into the House this morning there was no notice on the customary place. The customary place, for the benefit of those who have not been Members for long, is on the entrance to the Members' Lobby. I think that it is appropriate that there should be a short comment made by the Leader of the House on a statement of this kind.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: If it is on the same point of order, perhaps I can help the House. If the Government decide to make a statement on a Friday, that is a matter for them. They inform Mr. Speaker's Office. I understand that the Government want to make a statement at 11 o'clock.

Mr. John McWilliam: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This refers to the point of order that my hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) raised initially rather than the one that has developed. I want to draw to your attention the fact that apparently yesterday's Daily Mail had details of a statement to be made in this House before hon. Members had heard it. I think that that is an abuse. It is an abuse that it appears in a newspaper before we have the statement and it is a serious abuse that it happens on a Friday when the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Franks) is not in his place to hear the statement.

Mr. Frank Cook: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am not surprised at this tactic being engaged in yet again. It seems to me a standard procedure for the Government to manipulate the procedures of the House in a manner designed to keep Labour Members particularly ignorant of their activities. I am concerned that the commercial undertaking which is identified with this Vickers proposal is Trafalgar House. I am concerned that there are familiar connections between that company and members of the Government.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a matter for the Chair and the hon. Gentleman knows that.

Mr. Ray Powell: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am asking you to use your authority regarding this statement, because you are aware that the Opposition have continually complained about the Government making statements of great importance such as this on a Friday. I appreciate what you said earlier, that the Government have a right to be able to do this, but surely the Chair should be able to rule that the Government should at least give notice to the House when they intend to make a statement of this nature so that hon. Members interested in the statement can participate. How can hon. Members who have returned to their constituency to deal with interests there be here to question the Minister making the statement today? Surely, it should be the right of the Chair to determine whether the Government have given hon. Members the opportunity to be here to participate today? I am asking you to rule on that.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman knows that statements are often made on Fridays. I am not able to instruct the Government whether they should make a statement.

Mr. Dickens: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not right that when a statement is


ready to be given to the House that statement should be made at the earliest opportunity because, obviously, it will contain news. It is not necessarily just for those hon. Members who happen to be present at the time. It is also fully printed in Hansard and helps to avoid that which the Opposition have criticised in points of order, that is leaks. I feel that it is sensible to let us all know at the earliest opportunity. If a few hon. Members are missing, that is neither here nor there—it is just unfortunate.

Mr. O'Neill: Further to the original point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The point has to be made that when we have a debate on a Friday morning we come to the House to discuss one issue. Something has come to our attention in a newspaper, which many of us may not read regularly—the Daily Mail. Perhaps we ought to read it more often. There are procedures, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Rutherglen (Mr. MacKenzie) said, for letting us know about statements. A statement of this magnitude should have been announced in advance and should not have been announced on the annuciator at the time that it was. The House had been sitting for an hour before the announcement was made. It would have been for the convenience of hon. Members for the announcement to be on the board at 9 o'clock. It is a discourtesy to the House and I believe that it is the responsibility of the Chair to ensure that our interests are protected in these matters.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I think that Mr. Speaker has indicated that it is a great advantage to the House to have as much notice as possible when a statement is to be made. The point that has been raised is a matter for the Government. It is not a point of order for the Chair.

Mr. McWilliam: On a different point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You will agree that the decision whether to accept a statement is entirely a matter for the Chair, not for anybody else, and that that is where the decision rests. Therefore, the issue is whether or not you accept the statement.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am advised, and I was fairly sure of my ground when I said this, that if the Government advise Mr. Speaker of the intention to make such a statement, Mr. Speaker cannot reject it.

Mr. Forman: It is just possible that this is act two of a three-act speech. The central aspect of the unemployment problem, to which the House should pay the greatest attention, is long-term unemployment. Many Conservative Members wish that the Government would do even more in the Budget and on all other available occasions to tackle the problem. It can be approached in a number of ways.
Clearly the community programme has already been a great success. It needs to be extended at the most rapid sensible rate. Clearly the enterprise allowance scheme has also been a great success, and it would be a good idea to relax some of the terms and conditions of this excellent scheme to make it possible to expand it further. Clearly the job start experiment, which has so far been introduced only on a pilot basis, should be extended further, because once again it establishes the principle and cost-effectiveness of a measure of subsidy for employment.

The Employment Select Committee, in its interesting recent report, gave added weight to the arguments to extend those measures further.
The motion also refers to the problems of management. I hold no brief for the recent actions of Mr. Rupert Murdoch. However, it has been well said that those who have gone on strike in that part of the printing industry have effectively dismissed themselves. That is sad. In many cases when employees go on strike they confidently believe that their employer will wish to re-employ them because it is not thought to be in the employer's interests that they remain on strike. In this case, because of Mr. Murdoch's plans and dispositions, their action effectively amounted to their own dismissal. That is a tragedy, and it does not appeal to me any more than it does to Opposition Members.

Mr. John Prescott: Labour Members will have some sympathy for the hon. Gentleman's remarks, but is he aware that many of those workers were not involved in the dispute but were dismissed by Murdoch as a total action? What is the hon. Gentleman's position towards those workers?

Mr. Forman: The story is complicated, and I fully confess that I have not followed the details as closely as has the hon. Gentleman. Nevertheless, this seems to have more of the stuff of an industrial tragedy than anything else. Even at this late stage I wish that a move towards a more sensible resolution could be made. Clearly there is a problem, in that there is not a great deal of alternative employment for workers in the traditional skilled trades in our inner-city areas. That links up with what I shall say later about adult training and re-training.
It is unfortunate that for a long period the behaviour of certain elements in the printing industry has been almost a byword for restrictive practices. Those restrictive practices could not have continued for as long as they did without the connivance of weak and, and in many cases, incompetent management. Newspaper proprietors and managers of earlier times have a great deal to answer for in that respect. They allowed trade unions to control the hiring and firing procedures almost entirely, they allowed manning levels on existing machines to be determined by the unions rather than by themselves, and they effectively gave the unions a veto over the introduction of new technology which, as the House will know, stood idle for many years before it could be brought into production. That has more the element of tragedy than anything else. As so often in our long and distinguished history, we bring many problems on ourselves.

Mr. Frank Cook: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Forman: I should prefer to continue, as many hon. Members wish to speak.
I agree with the motion that we need a climate of economic expansion in the interests of employment and, equally, an atmosphere of industrial co-operation if we are to succeed, proper and provide new jobs, which both sides of the House wish to see. The Government, through their macro-economic policies, have produced precisely that climate of expansion and done better than many of their predecessors. I remind the House, if it needs reminding, that we are now in the fifth year of a satisfactory rate of economic growth. Manufacturing productivity is improving at a faster rate than in France or Germany, albeit from


a low base, and new jobs are being created, especially for women and part-time workers, and, I am glad to say that in the more successful parts of the private sector, also for full-time male workers.
Obviously, we wish to encourage as much industrial cooperation as possible in all parts of industry and commerce. The best of British management already manages to bring that about, but we must look for ways to bring the standards of the average management up to those of the best. That implies the need for further measures, possibly in the Budget, to encourage employee participation through wider share ownership for the general public, and especially for employees. The way ahead has beeen signposted to some extent by firms such as Baxi Partnership, the National Freight Consortium and the John Lewis Partnership, all of which involved their workers much more fully, partly through this mechanism. We should seek to find every sensible way to make progress towards what Professor Martin Weitzmann has called the "share economy". Sensible progress towards more revenue sharing would be preferable to the rather self-defeating pay scrambles of the past, and to the insistence on some of the traditional restrictive practices, which have damaged our competitive position.
The most serious emerging employment problem is not the legislative problem, to which the hon. Member for St Helens, North drew our attention, so much as the inherent conflict between insiders and outsiders within the employment market. That is a serious problem, and there are all the signs that the interests of the so-called outsiders—the part-timers, the self-employed and people working on a consultancy basis—are growing and improving. We welcome that, because it is partly responsible for the growth in employment. However, the interests of traditional insiders, particularly those who lose their jobs—those who were originally in male full-time paid employment—are not so attractive, especially with the decline of manufacturing industry.
In British industry and commerce, those who are secure insiders and who take steps to hold on to their jobs and to increase their pay, as can be seen from the figures for average earnings, do so at the expense of those who are insecurely outsiders and who would like to get in. I am not sure whether we can solve the problem easily or quickly, but the thrust of Government policy to deal with the problems of unemployment must now be dkirected principally at the sector of the unemployed who have not recently received sufficient attention—the middle-aged male family man who would like a full-time job and probably had one in, for example, manufacturing industry before he became redundant, and who wishes and needs to return to paid full-time employment to support his family.
The classic model of the nuclear family of the husband in full-time work, a wife not working, except to look after the children—I do not wish to take on the feminist lobby, because I know of the work involved in being a housewife — and two children, is now more of a myth than a reality. It accounts for only about 18 per cent. of all families. We must direct our attention to the people in that category who seek to return to full-time employment, and who are finding it difficult to do so. In the interim, their income needs support and they need our understanding.
There are several ways in which that group could be helped. An obvious way — I pay tribute to the Government for their recent action on this — is to continue to maintain the real value of child benefit. Until family credit is introduced in the spring of 1988, child benefit will be an important part of Government assistance for less well-off working families. Secondly, we must give priority in the Manpower Services Commission's strategy and in all the training programmes to the needs of adult training and retraining. We are helping too few people in this respect — only 250,000 — and I hope that the Government will give every possible support, financially and in other ways, to such training schemes. Thirdly, I stress that we have examples of successful programmes which are up and running. They include the community programme, the enterprise allowance and the job start scheme. I hope that Ministers will put their full weight behind those schemes so that, in the Budget, those measures can be carried forward.
The underlying factor in the interests of employment is that we must sustain a high level of economic growth, as the Government have done, and reduce inflation even further, as the Government are committed to do. If those two conditions are fulfilled, the private sector — to which my hon. Friend the Minister referred in the context of capital spending — will do the lion's share of the work. That is the way in which a healthy economy works and the way in which jobs have been created successfully in our partner and competitor countries.
If my hon. Friend the Minister wished to refresh his memory of ways in which we could complete our agenda of measures to deal with unemployment, I suggest humbly that he could do worse than re-read the checklist on the front page of the pamphlet "Work to be Done", published by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Maples) and myself, in which he will find several measures to which the Government have not directed their attention, but which could usefully be pressed on his colleagues in the Treasury.
I commend what the Government have done so far, but I urge them to do more, especially to deal with the No. 1 problem of long-term unemployment. They must focus their efforts principally on the needs of the adult unemployed, having satisfactorily dealt with youth unemployment through the youth training scheme. We must find ways of helping the middle-aged unemployed to return to gainful employment.

Mr. Michael Foot: I shall comment on several of the matters mentioned by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Forman), especially on his remarks and others made during the debate about what is happening at Wapping. We must try to find a solution to that serious industrial dispute. I understand how eagerly the hon. Gentleman had to search to find matters on which to congratulate the Government. He congratulated them on maintaining child benefit, but I know that he, other Conservative Members and all Opposition Members have urged the full maintenance of child benefit. No one knows better than the hon. Gentleman that, were the Government to do that, they would have had to increase child benefit by considerably more than they announced a few days ago. I am glad to


support his demand that we should rectify the matter, perhaps in this Budget, and sustain child benefit at its proper level.
I shall comment later on the speech made by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment in reply to Monday's Adjournment debate on Wapping. It was a deplorable speech.
The motion lists many different forms of action that must be taken by the Department of Employment, in which I have a special interest. I must clarify some of the misconceptions that have been spread, not necessarily by the Under-Secretary of State—he is young to the game —but by some of his Conservative predecessors at the Department, who have tried to spread strange tales about what it achieved during the Labour Government.
The main work of the Department falls into four categories, all of which must operate successfully to obtain a decent employment policy. First, the Manpower Services Commission was set up a little before we came into office in 1974, but all the substantial expansion and financing of the MSC, and the special role that it was asked to play in the training programme, which remains of such great importance, was the work of the 1974 Labour Government. Some Ministers have said, absurdly, that we were not interested in training programmes, but we spent greatly increased sums on training. We allowed the Manpower Services Commission to go full speed ahead with the work, and we wanted to graft the new training programmes on to the programmes that preceded them.
Unfortunately, the Conservative Government inflicted serious injury on many training and apprenticeship schemes. Their conversion to a better training policy arrived belatedly. If the Minister looks back at what we did on training, he will know how puerile is the tale that our approach was not ambitious and intelligent.
The Labour Government established the Health and Safety Commission and, therefore, extended safety provision to about 5 million people who had not had it previously. That aspect of the Department's work is increasingly important, especially since the development of the chemical and nuclear industries. I vividly remember the enthusiasm of the chief inspector of factories for the establishment of the commission. I am glad that even this Government have not dared to destroy it, although its effectiveness has been considerably impaired by the shortage of inspectors and the Government's failure to recognise what could be achieved by an imaginative programme for extending health and safety provisions into many other areas.
My hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) mentioned what the Government have done,

through a series of measures, to curb employment rights or remove them altogether. It is especially offensive that people who have never had to worry about their salaries should wish to cut the salaries of many youngsters and others. It is also offensive that, after so much effort was made to extend employment rights to women and to set up a programme by which that could be carried forward, during their six years in office the Government have been searching for ways to curb the extension of rights. We must ensure that we carry forward the work that was initiated during the years for which the Labour Government is sometimes attacked.
The Labour Government also established the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service. That has a direct bearing on the Wapping dispute and on how we might find a way out of it. Neither side of industry could accuse ACAS of being non-independent. It was established for that purpose, and great credit is due to its two main directors during its life, Jim Mortimer and his successor, both of whom carried out their tasks excellently. One advantage that the Government possess is that they could use ACAS in this dispute and in others much more effectively than they have. I urge them to do so.
Some Conservative Members—the worst offender is the chairman of the Conservative party, who had a brief and disastrous spell at the Department of Employment—try to say that the Labour Government did not contribute to industrial relations. However, we established the main independent body on which any sensible development of industrial relations must now depend. I hope, therefore, that the Government will pay particular attention to the constructive proposals that I shall be making later in my speech about the way in which we should seek an honourable and decent escape from the terrible dispute in Wapping. More than 5,000 people have had their jobs taken from them in the most shameful and shocking manner and it is the duty of the House of Commons to try to find a way out.
I see that the Minister for Trade is getting ready to speak. I thought for a moment that he had come to speak on behalf of his old Department, the Department of Employment, but I gather that he has risen on the stepping stones of his dead self to higher things at the Department of Trade and Industry—or perhaps he has descended to nether regions altogether. If 1, like the Minister for Trade, had had a good job at the Department of Employment and was doing it fairly decently, I should not have gone off to join those racketeers.

It being Eleven o'clock, MR. SPEAKER interrupted the proceedings, pursuant to Standing Order No. 5 (Friday sittings).

International Tin Council

11 am

Mr. David Harris: (by private notice)asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will make a statement on the breakdown of the negotiations with the International Tin Council and the attempt to resolve the debts of that council.

The Minister for Trade (Mr. Alan Clark): The Government regret that the protracted negotiations between the International Tin Council and its bank and broker creditors have now broken down without reaching agreement to resolve the tin crisis.
We have constantly made it clear, following suspension by the ITC of its operations in the tin market on 24 October last with gross commitments exceeding £800 million, that the United Kingdom was prepared to accept its share of the liabilities of the ITC, and we called on all other members to do likewise.
It is especially unfortunate that the breakdown of negotiations has come at a time when substantial progress had been made towards resolving the tin crisis in an orderly fashion. Had the ITC member countries collectively shown a greater sense of urgency and responsibility from the outset, a solution might have been found. Discussions between members of the European Community were protracted, and formal negotiations by the ITC began only at the end of January. However, the final breakdown of negotiations was caused by the refusal of some producer countries to accept the proposals.
At this late stage, it seems unlikely that a settlement can now be reached in order to secure a return to orderly trading in tin. If a substantial number of other ITC countries were prepared to make a new effort to resolve the crisis, the Government would of course be willing to join such discussions. But it must be clear, as it has been throughout the earlier discussions and negotiations, that the United Kingdom Government are not prepared alone to take over the responsibility for the ITC's debts.
The Government deplore the failure of certain other Governments to agree to meet their share of the commitments of the ITC. That failure undermines good faith and integrity in international financial dealings.

Mr. Harris: First, I pay tribute to the Government for the lead that they have taken in trying to achieve a resolution of this complex international problem and for their willingness to put up £50 million as their part of a bid to achieve a solution. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a real tragedy that the negotiations have broken down after having got so far, and that the ramifications of that failure of negotiations are truly enormous, making the Westland affair look like a minor financial incident?
Does my hon. Friend agree that there are enormous implications for the whole future of London as a commodity trading centre, major implications for the Third world and—this is my particular preoccupation—extremely worrying implications for the Cornish tin industry? May I press my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to act with real urgency over the problems of the Cornish tin industry? May I impress upon my hon. Friend that, through no fault of its own, the Geevor tin mine in my constituency is really at risk now that the talks have

broken down? Will the Government respond urgently to the request for special temporary assistance to enable the Cornish tin industry, and Geevor in particular, to survive?

Mr. Clark: I am obliged to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) for the tribute that he paid to the Government's efforts to solve the crisis or to prevent it reaching its present dimension. The United Kingdom has played a leading part throughout in attempting to achieve a solution and in offering contributions greatly in excess of the 4 per cent. that we are bound under the agreement to contribute to costs.
I agree with my hon. Friend that at this early stage the implications, both in global terms and in the effect on the City, have yet to be seen in their entirety. I know that my hon. Friend has a particular constituency interest, and the whole House will applaud his efforts to draw our attention to the plight of his constituents. The Government are very much aware of that aspect, but we feel that it would not be appropriate to take action until the market has at any rate stabilised, so that we can see what the prospects for commercial trading in tin and the economics of mining it are likely to be. Once the market has stabilised and we see what the commercial prospects are, we would of course be willing to consider applications for grant towards the cost of capital investment. Those grants will be made in the light of the market conditions prevailing at the time.

Mr. Alan Williams: I am grateful to the Minister for coming here and giving us a fairly interesting historical analysis of the situation leading up to today's statement, but he has said nothing about where we go from here. He has put forward no positive proposals. The negotiations have been running into trouble for more than four months, and collapse must have been a strong possibility throughout. What are the Government's contingency plans? Is the Minister seriously telling us that, having been aware for four months of the crisis that was liable to occur, the Government have not one positive proposal to make, apart from the suggestion that they might give some grant if someone is silly enough to invest in tin mines which will have no market for their product?
The Minister seems unaware that the price of tin is likely to collapse as 16 banks begin to offload 45,000 tonnes of tin on to the market. What does he think that that will do to the 13 brokers who are at risk for up to £550 million? Many of those brokers also deal in other commodities, so there may be repercussions way beyond the tin market, putting at risk the survival of the whole London metal exchange. The Minister seems completely unaware of all that or of the fact that there is about to be chaos in the world tin market.
What plans does the Minister have to help the Cornish tin workers, for whom his hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) has pleaded, if the price of tin collapses below the level at which it is viable to produce it, for example, at Geevor? Does the Minister appreciate that if he has no plans to help, this could mean the end of tin production in the United Kingdom?

Mr. Clark: In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives I stated the Government's position in relation to the Geevor tin mine and tin production in Cornwall. We view the situation with great concern, we are watching it very closely, and at the appropriate moment we shall judge the level at which grants should be made for investment.
The right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) fell somewhat short of his objective in accusing the Government of failing to intervene on a greater scale to prevent chaos in the City. I am not sure what the right hon. Gentleman was recommending. We have already taken the lead in the efforts to solve the crisis. Our offer of a contribution to finance the agreement was extremely generous, both in absolute terms and in relation to our treaty obligations. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will enlighten the House on whether he is really suggesting that yet more taxpayers' money should be thrown into an extremely uncertain and difficult situation. He mentioned the difficulties that will face certain brokers. Is he suggesting that they should be individually bailed out by the Government?

Mr. Tim Smith: Does my hon. Friend accept that the United Kingdom was the only member of the International Tin Council prepared to stand behind its legal obligations? Is it not deplorable that other members, including members of the EEC, and in particular, West Germany, have refused to do so? What possible future can there be for international trade agreements if member states refuse to stand behind their legal obligations?

Mr. Clark: My hon. Friend's view is uncomfortable, but valid. At every stage the United Kingdom has done its best to bring about a solution to the crisis. It is regrettable that delays, indecisions, and a certain optimism—I am not the best person to judge that—prevented any of our Community partners or other countries from coming forward with positive suggestions. As to the future, it may be possible to reach agreement and for all the parties to mount a salvage operation, but at the moment the prospects look exceedingly bleak.

Mr. Robert Maclennan: Is the Minister's statement not a deeply irresponsible and shocking abdication of Government responsibility which will be noted with appalled reactions throughout the City? Last night why did the Minister not respond positively to the proposal by Mr. Jacques Lyon that the Government should take a lead in the rescue plan and not simply rail against other countries for their failure to take a lead?
Does the hon. Gentleman have any understanding of the consequences, not only for the City but for the banking system, of the collapse of the London metal exchange, which is at risk because of the Government's supine response to the crisis? Has the Minister nothing more to say to the 1,500 workers in the tin industry, and will he examine proposals for investment in the industry?

Mr. Clark: I am amazed at the hon. Gentleman. He knows the lead that the United Kingdom has adopted throughout. He has heard from both sides of the House how we received almost no support from the other partners to the agreement. He has heard the size of the sum—£50 million—which the United Kingdom has put on the table.
Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that we should have increased the sum, and not put it into the founding of a new tin council, which would take over the obligations, but paid it directly to the City? What is the hon. Gentleman suggesting? It would be wrong and irresponsible to increase the sum and to use taxpayers' money for direct grants—if that is what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting—to those who are in difficulties in the City of London.

Mr. Harry Greenway: Is my hon. Friend aware that the International Tin Research Institute is in my constituency? Is he aware also that I hope he will continue to attempt to drag European and other Governments, kicking and screaming, towards an agreement on tin? Does he agree that without that agreement container commodities for food and drinks, including bottles, will not have the strength or unbreakability which is needed? Tin is essential.

Mr. Clark: My hon. Friend is right. The prospects are bleak. I do not know about dragging Governments kicking and screaming, but if there is a general perception of the gravity of the problem, the original possibilities remain. It has proved so difficult to achieve unanimity that the possibility of finding a solution is not promising.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Is the Minister aware that if he started by being concerned, not about speculators in the City but about the more than 1,000 workers engaged in the tin mining industry, and if he was prepared to strip himself of the dogma, he might be able to find a solution? Tin is a non-perishable commodity. If the Government want to keep the tin industry and to keep the tin miners and others in jobs, the Minister would take the stance that he took in October 1984 with another valuable commodity — gold. At that time the Government were not much bothered about market forces or uneconomic units of production and decided to save Johnson Matthey Bankers by nationalisation. The same process could be developed in the tin industry.
A previous Government took a similar attitude when Rolls-Royce got into an almighty mess. People felt that something should be done, so it was taken over. If the Government seriously want to look after the jobs of the tin workers and ensure a continuing tin industry, they would dismiss questions about the London metal exchange arid get on with the job of saving the tin mines in Cornwall.
In the absence of the Liberals, who do not seem to be interested, will the Minister take the questions on board and do what was done with JMB and so save the jobs and the industry?

Mr. Clark: I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman could hardly let his chagrin fail to show. We are not bailing out the London metal exchange, although I am sure that that would be the solution that the hon. Gentleman would have predicted.

Mr. Skinner: I did not say that.

Mr. Clark: I can understand the hon. Gentleman' s chagrin at the fact that we are not running true to the stereotype that he describes. I have already explained the measures that we envisage taking to help the plight of the Cornish tin miners. The miners' problem is different in quality from that of others who are in difficulties because of the situation. The hon. Gentleman is so ready—understandably—to condemn certain aspects of the Common Market and the CAP and the accumulation of mountains, and I was interested to hear that his solution is the accumulation of a giant mountain of tin.

Sir Antony Buck: Is my hon. Friend aware that I sympathise with him in having to deal with a difficult problem? Will he comment further on the attitude of our allies, because it seems that they, and West Germany in particular, have not fulfilled their obligations?

Mr. Clark: The House can reach its own conclusions and read the press, but I do not want to pick a fight with any of our Community partners or with any of the other countries involved. The facts speak for themselves. The failure to achieve harmony, a united attitude, or a level of contributions is at the root of the mishap.

Mr. Frank Cook: Has the Minister tried to solicit American involvement as a means of rescuing the industry, or are Americans who invest in this country interested only in cleaning up profits and milking the economy?

Mr. Clark: I understand that America is not a member of the International Tin Council.

Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Paul Channon): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement.
I have today given my consent to the sale of Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Limited to the VSEL Employee Consortium plc. Its offer consists of a downpayment of £60 million, together with a profit-sharing arrangement for the period 1986 to1992, which could provide British Shipbuilders with further payments of up to £40 million in 1992 and 1993. The consortium has undertaken to complete and fund the remainder of the work on the submarine facilities project, which will modernise the production facilities at VSEL and enable the company to complete the Trident submarine programme in accordance with the Ministry of Defence's requirements.
As far as the Trident submarine programme is concerned, the consortium on Wednesday gave the Ministry of Defence an undertaking that it would negotiate a contract for the first Trident submarine on terms, price, programme and conditions which represent a significant improvement to the Ministry of Defence on the terms previously offered by VSEL while it remained under the control of British Shipbuilders.
The House will be aware that the consortium's bid was not the only one for VSEL. The commercial terms of the other bid were judged by British Shipbuilders and its financial advisers, in so far as they affected British Shipbuilders, to be superior to those of the consortium's bid. But there is a further term in the other bid, which I am bound not to disclose without the bidder's permission, which I found very difficult to accept. British Shipbuilders, moreover, acknowledged that other interests beyond the remit of British Shipbuilders to consider are involved in the sale. I agree with this. I have therefore decided that the consortium's bid is to be preferred. I wish the consortium well.

Mr. Alan Williams: I strongly object to the right hon. Gentleman's grave discourtesy. He was aware that the Opposition had asked that the statement should be deferred until Monday, and not only did the Government persist in going ahead with it today, but they ensured that I received a copy of the statement only at 10.53—seven minutes before the House was due to break into the morning business. As the Government were able yesterday to indicate to The London Standard that they planned to make some form of statement today, how on earth can the Secretary of State justify the discourtesy to the Opposition?
I also object to this furtive device of slipping such an important announcement through on a Friday. It is not only that it has taken up rare private Members' time—though that is an important consideration for hon. Members. It has also denied many hon. Members with a deep interest in this major policy decision a chance to ask questions on this important statement. Why was the matter so urgent that the statement had to be made this morning?
Does not the whole saga reveal the tensions and disagreements that exist between the Ministry of Defence


and the Department of Trade and Industry? Have we not clearly heard over the last two weeks the squelch of firm government? First, we had the extended deadline; then, within hours, the extension was cancelled; then the Government were to take the bids without first settling the contract for Trident; then, after Tuesday's deadline, according to The Guardian, the Government demanded theoretical terms for the Trident contract. I note from the statement that there are still no firm terms. When can we expect them to be finally negotiated?
How realistic was it to expect either of the parties to end months of haggling within a couple of days and give the Secretary of State a firm price? If, as The Guardian says and as the right hon. Gentleman's statement reveals, the terms in relation to Trident are purely theoretical and are only an indication of good will, how was the Secretary of State able to decide between the merits of the two bids? How was he able to decide whether the valuation was soundly based? What was the basis on which he eventually decided? I note that the right hon. Gentleman said that there is an element of confidentiality, but the House is entitled to more information about what led him to choose the hid which he says was the less commercial. Is it true, as has been suggested, that Trafalgar House was allowed to submit its bid after the deadline?
Hon. Members will want to know what assurances are given in the bid that has been accepted about the future of Cammell Laird and about the security of employment of those who will be affected by the decision. Is it not the ultimate absurdity that the Government are selling into private hands our only yard which is capable of producing nuclear submarines? Is it not an abuse of public funds to do that after £200 million of public money has been invested in the yard?

Mr. Channon: I am a little surprised at the terms of the right hon. Gentleman's question. The last thing that I expected to be told this morning was that our decision was an abuse of public funds. However, I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman and to the House for the fact that the statement has to be made this morning. I know that that is inconvenient—

Mr. Dennis Skinner: The right hon. Gentleman is hardly ever here.

Mr. Channon: I am occasionally here. The House surely understands that once I had come to a decision it would have been quite wrong for me not to disclose it to the House at the earliest opportunity. To do otherwise would be a very serious mistake. I am sorry if the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues have been inconvenienced, but I fear that there was no alternative.
I cannot accept what the right hon. Gentleman says about disagreements between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence and myself. We have worked in complete harmony. I made clear in my statement the reasons why we have come to this decision, which I am sure will be welcomed by some Members.

Mr. Cecil Franks: On behalf of the management, employees, local communities and the whole of the north-west, may I express deep gratitude and pleasure at my right hon. Friend's announcement? I am sure he will agree with me that the decision ably and amply demonstrates the Government's confidence in the north-west and their firm commitment to the principle of wider

share ownership, with the opportunity for employees to share in the fruits of their labour. I assure my right hon. Friend that the premier submarine builder of the nation can look forward with great confidence to the 21st century and continue to serve the nation as it has for the past century.

Mr. Channon: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his support.

Mr. Gregor MacKenzie: During the discussions that the Secretary of State arid his colleagues had leading up to the statement, was there any discussion about the apportionment of the submarine programme? The right hon. Gentleman will be conscious of the fact that we on Clydeside felt that we got a shabby deal on that matter, and, on behalf of my colleagues in the west of Scotland, I should like to know whether there is to be a reapportionment of the substantial submarine programme and whether we on Clydeside are to get a share of it.

Mr. Channon: With respect to the right hon. Gentleman, that question raises different issues from those with which I am dealing. However, I am told by my hon. Friend the Minister of State that the answer to his question is no.

Sir Antony Buck: Is my right hon. friend aware that his statement will be widely welcomed on the Government Benches, particularly as he was courteous enough to apologise to the House for making a statement on a Friday, which, as a general rule, is inconvenient? Will my right hon. Friend confirm that his solution provides the best chances of the Royal Navy getting its ships and submarines on time and on cost?

Mr. Channon: I am sure that this provides a very good assurance for that to happen.

Mr. Frank Field: I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and express the relief that will be felt in Cammell Laird this morning about the decision that he has made. Before the right hon. Gentleman finally ties up the deal, will he see Wirral Members, so that we can ensure that Cammell Laird is effectively represented on the board that will run the new company?

Mr. Channon: I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support. I note the views in the latter part of his question. I am not sure that that is a matter for me, but I shall certainly study what he has said. I am, of course, always available to see hon. Members who wish to see me.

Mr. Peter Thurnham: I join my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Franks) in congratulating the Government on deciding to privatise the yard. I am sure that all hon. Members from the north-west will join me in congratulating the Government on taking such an important decision for the largest engineering complex in the country and on their commitment to wider share ownership. I am sure that the committed work force led by Sir David Nicolson and Rodney Leach, will be successful in world markets as well as in satisfying all the requirements for defence in this country.

Mr. Channon: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support.

Mr. John McWilliam: Will the Secretary of State accept that his statement is not acceptable because


it is incomplete without the clause which he seems to suggest is commercially in confidence? Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what was worrying him about that aspect, because I am sure that we would all like to know? Will the right hon. Gentleman also tell the House how many jobs he expects to remain in British shipbuilding after the management buy-out?

Mr. Channon: No, Sir. I made it clear in my statement to the House that I am bound not to disclose the terms of the other bid without the permission of the bidders. Therefore, I have nothing to add to what I said earlier. As to the second part of the right hon. Gentleman's question, that is a matter for the consortium.

Mr. Christopher Chope: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the wise counsels that have prevailed in this instance. May I ask him to confirm that 38 per cent. of the work force confirmed, when asked the question, that their principal reason for being in favour of the management buy-out and privatisation was that it would give them an incentive to work harder? Is my right hon. Friend also able to say whether the terms on which this agreement has been negotiated will not be such as to mean that Vosper Thornycroft will be unfairly hindered in its efforts to compete freely and openly in bids for merchant and Royal Navy ships?

Mr. Channon: I am sure that it can compete, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support. I note what he said in the earlier part of his supplementary question.

Mr. Robert Maclennan: As a Member of Parliament whose constituency has for many years enjoyed a close relationship with Vickers through it subcontracting work, may I say that, of the options before the Minister, it appears that he has chosen the better one? However, it would be helpful if he could say more than he has done in answer to the questions that were put to him by the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams). Is he able to say whether the arrangement includes the initial proposal that shares in the consortium should be offered for purchase by members of the local communities surrounding the shipyard?

Mr. Channon: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support. I understand that the answer to the latter part of his supplementary question is yes.

Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his decision is likely to be widely welcomed in the defence establishment as sound and sensible? Will he comment on his discussions with the two bidders about the theoretical cancellation of the Trident programme in the event of a Labour Government being returned to power at the next general election, and say what guarantees, if any, were given to the two bidders about that possibility?

Mr. Channon: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he said in the first part of his supplementary question. However, any discussions with the bidders must remain confidential.

Mr. Eric Forth: Will my right hon. Friend accept that this is an excellent example of a policy which is of the greatest benefit to taxpayers, employees and all those involved with the industry? Does

he agree that there is nothing to be feared from the provision of vital defence supplies by the private sector, as this has been done very successfully in the United States for many decades?

Mr. Channon: I note what my hon. Friend said, and I am grateful to him.

Mr. Don Dixon: Obviously we welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has accepted this bid rather than the Trafalgar House bid. However, does he realise that what he has said today sounds the death knell for British Shipbuilders? By selling off its profitable warship yards the Secretary of State has virtually killed off British Shipbuilders. When Mr. Day goes to British Leyland, we must hope that he will not have the same effect upon our car industry as he has had upon our British shipbuilding industry.

Mr. Channon: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I think that uncharacteristically he is being a little unfair.

Employment Rights

Question again proposed.

Mr. Foot: I should like to return to the topic with which I was dealing when I was so rudely interrupted by at least one Government botch, if not two Government botches, although I suppose that on the second count we must give the Government the benefit of the doubt, even though there are some difficulties there.
I said that I wanted to refer to the Wapping dispute. I say that all the more in the light of the reply, or the non-reply, that the Under-Secretary gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North East (Mr. Leighton) on Monday night. To all of the questions that were put to him by my hon. Friend about the Government's view on any of these matters and what they would do about them, the Minister gave no reply. He turned aside to other aspects of the matter.
This is a most serious dispute. It is serious for those individuals who have been sacked. From 5,000 to 6,000 people have lost their jobs without compensation, redundancy, or even any dole at the moment. It is a serious crisis for them. If this kind of industrial operation were to be repeated or tolerated by the Government of the day, the consequences for British industrial relations would be very serious indeed.
I have been interested in the printing trade for many years. Indeed, if I have any interest to declare in the matter, it is that I have been a member of the National Union of Journalists for 50 years or so. The NUJ has a deep interest in this dispute because its members have been profoundly divided by what has occurred. I shall try to keep my language as temperate as possible, because I am seeking, on behalf of those who have been so gravely injured—the members of SOGAT '82, the NUJ and others — a solution to the problem and I want the Government's assistance in achieving that aim.
To illustrate what happened, I shall quote from an article that was printed in The Times a week or so after the move to Wapping. This article was written by Mr. Longley, the religious affairs correspondent of The Times. I do not know whether the fact that he was writing as the newly appointed father of the NUJ chapel of The Times, the previous father of the chapel having refused to go to


Wapping, had anything to do with it. I think that we can understand his views and those of other journalists, either at The Times, The Sunday Times, or elsewhere. Let me quote a few of the things that were said in the article about what happened to the journalists. They can be multiplied much more when applied to the others who were involved in the dispute, including the printers.
Mr. Longley said:
At The Times we keep our agreements. Collectively, we form ourselves into a chapel, and collectively, through the chapel, we negotiate new ones. At least, that was what we thought we did. It is the disturbance of that belief, and the emotional shock it caused, that has taken us through the ordeal of the past 12 days…The chapel has new officers. We are keeping to the agreement we made under duress.
He said that some of The Times journalists refused to accept the new agreement that was forced upon them. A few paragraphs later he describes the discussions that took place among The Times journalists on this matter and says:
But the management demanded we move, and it had the law on its side. An eminent QC was briefed and consulted by this chapel, and in measured terms, with chapter and verse, he counselled us that our contracts required us to accept a new place of work, and new working methods. Our management may have had a moral obligation to seek a deal with us first, and even a legal obligation under the grievance procedure in each individual contract of employment, but it took leading counsel no time at all to find in our house agreement the familiar phrase: 'This agreement is binding in honour only'.
Some of us believe that in trade union affairs agreements made in honour are the very ones that should be honoured most. A few paragraphs later Mr. Longley said:
While our eyes were on the word 'honour' in our house agreement, the management's eyes were no less on the word 'only', in that fragile phrase `binding in honour only'…We felt it bound; we felt it bound management. We still feel that.
In other words, the journalists who are now producing The Times at Wapping feel that they were subjected to duress, that their agreement was flagrantly broken by the management, and that the management should still be carrying out that agreement. If that is the view that is held by eminent journalists on The Times there ought to be concern among decent-minded people throughout the country.
Moreover, one has to consider the terms under which Mr. Murdoch's ownership of The Times was established. It is also mentioned by Mr. Longley in his article. He says:
Finally, there must be questions about the constitution of The Times itself. Guarantees were given at the time of the acquisition of the paper by the present proprietor about the protection of its authority, quality, and editorial freedom. These principles are in fact intact at Wapping. But it is not easy to reconcile them with the threat to dismiss us all if we would not move.
I agree it is not easy to reconcile those points. It is even more difficult to reconcile that approach in terms of those printers, journalists and other trade union members who did not have the chance to move even if they were prepared to do so. They were told that they would be sacked. They had taken a ballot and had followed religiously the Government's prescriptions on how to approach a dispute, but they then found themselves in their present situation.
I think it is a matter of honour for anyone who reads the words of The Times correspondent to accept that Mr. Murdoch has acted dishonourably—those are the only words, in fact the kindest words, which can be applied to Mr. Murdoch.
When anyone examines the background to this dispute—I know it has a lengthy background—it is clear that from the beginning, especially from late 1984, the main unions concerned, SOGAT '82, the NGA, the NUJ and

other unions have been prepared to negotiate. They asked for that right from the beginning. The negotiations took place on false pretences because at the very moment when Mr. Murdoch and his managers said they were negotiating about one aspect of the matter they were in fact negotiating on an entirely different conspiratorial affair. I cannot believe that any decent Government, or any Minister at the Department of Employment would think that that is a tolerable state of affairs. The Minister for Employment commented on Mr. Murdoch's behaviour and that gave some hope that the Government would assist in this dispute. However, the Government have proceeded to retreat from that position.
The reply of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment to my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East the other night was hopeless. I do not mean the reply was hopeless but it was hopeless for the future of British industrial relations. If Mr. Murdoch gets away with this, other employers —there may be others in this country as outrageous and barbaric as Mr. Murdoch — may seek to follow his practice. If that happens, industrial relations in Britain will be an absolute shambles—and a most unfair shambles.
The worst unfairness will not fall upon the people with highest salaries. It will fall, and is falling, on several thousands of people who lost their jobs some three or four weeks ago. They have no prospects of anything being done for them. The unions are trying to solve the problem and they are doing their best. However, their funds have been sequestrated and they are threatened with further sequestrations in highly dangerous circumstances.
I urge the Government, in the interests of decent people in the country, in the interests of decent treatment for individuals and their families and in the interests of decent industrial relations, to take responsibility for the matter. The Government must not wash their hands. They must seek ways to proceed. I believe that any Government who studied the events that led to this dispute would come to the conclusion that the unions were prepared to negotiate. They are still prepared to do so. The Government do not listen. Are they prepared to let the dispute grind on to lead to further injustices, further outrages on individual families and further injury to an industry and profession in which I take some pride? I certainly do not take any pride in the way in which divisions have been forced on so many journalists in this matter. I can understand those who refuse to go to The Times, but I can understand those who went. Some reconciliation must be sought, and any decent Government would recognise that.
I hope that, when the Minister comes to reply, he will say that he will go back and talk to his Ministerrs about this and see whether they can get proper negotiations in progress, negotiations which would seek to restore the jobs of many of those who have been sacked. The negotiations should also seek a solution on the proper use of new technology. It is false to say that this dispute arises from the refusal of the unions to engage in the use of new technology. Those who have listened to the leaders of Sogat '82 and the NGA know that that charge is a false one. They are seeking, and have always sought, intelligent negotiations. They thought they were near to that and anyone who reads the documents can see that. ACAS could read those documents and I urge the Minister to employ the services of ACAS.
In some disputes it is essential for the Department of Employment to undertake its old responsibilities. Some of


those responsibilities, quite properly, have been transferred to ACAS. ACAS has the expert skill to deal with some of these disputes. However, other disputes can only be dealt with by the Minister himself. I urge the Minister, with all the power I can, to take a humane and sensible view of our industrial relations.
I would like to say one word about another aspect of the question. The Minister intervened in the debate and taunted my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, North with the charge that we have not got plans that would work for sustaining people in employment. In the Government's first three or four years we attacked them for the huge unemployment they were causing and tolerating. They turned that aside and stated that one must look at the employment figures. The Government said that is more sensible. I do not deride that all together.
The Department of Employment, which I commend, went ahead with the White Paper "Employment: The Challenge for the Nation". I think one part of a page of the White Paper was placed there inadvertently. When I read it I thought it had come straight from Central Office. However, I know that there are still some expert statisticians left at the Department of Employment—a place I have the highest respect for—who ensured that the chart was put on page 7. I commend it to everyone who has studied the document—it is no doubt burned on the Under-Secretary's heart.
The chart on page 7 showed the number of people in employment in Britain over a considerable number of years. It showed the period of highest employment in Britain. Which was it? 1979–80—the very period when "Labour wasn't working." That was the period when more people were employed than ever before, certainly more than have been employed since. Therefore, when Saatchi and Saatchi plastered the hoardings—at a high cost to the Conservatives—they should have made the point that in that period of Labour Government the employment of our people was at a higher peak than ever before.
We had to deal with all the problems that the Government now face—the democratic factors involved, the problems of oil prices, international crises—all these problems. We dealt with all those problems and far from that Labour Government being incapable of dealing with the problems, this Tory Government's own chart shows how well we coped.
The contrast between the two Governments is very simple. In the last year or two of that Labour Government —much misused and abused by Conservative Members and not least the Chairman of the Conservative party—we had the highest number of people employed—

Mr. Holt: And the lowest productivity.

Mr. Foot: In the period under this Government we have the highest number of people unemployed. That is a sharp contrast.

Mr. Peter Thurnham: I should have liked to congratulate the hon. Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) on his motion, but I am disappointed with its terms. Indeed, I cannot agree with a word of it. I am also disappointed at the attitude of Opposition Members. Why do they only look back? They have

nothing to look forward to, but the British people, under the present Government, have a great deal to look forward to.
Why have we heard only about Wapping? Why have we heard nothing about Eddie Shah and the Today newspaper? Why has not one Opposition Member congratulated Eddie Shah on producing the newspaper with such high productivity? The right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) spoke about so many people who were, as he thought, employed under the last Labour Government. What were they doing, bearing in mind that 6,000 people were producing a newspaper that can be produced by 600? Is that what the right hon. Gentleman calls employment? Such overmanning is the cause of the country's difficulties. Our unemployment is the legacy of years of such nonsense.

Mr. Evans: The hon. Gentleman will not have a job after the next election.

Mr. Thurnham: Trying to solve the problems of the long-term unemployed is an important matter, but we shall do it only by having an economy that pays and works efficiently. Every line of the motion harks back to the dreadful old days when the country could not afford anything. That is why we got into such a poor predicament.
I can see why the motion was not tabled until so late last night—the hon. Gentleman must be ashamed of it. Every line of it is rubbish. It calls attention to a supposed diminution in employment rights. There has been no diminution. People have been freed from the domination of the trade unions. The Opposition say that they will repeal legislation which has been widely welcomed and which returns trade unions to their members. Why? People have been allowed to get on and work.
Why do we have to assume that everybody must be provided with a job? Why do we have so much less self-employment than other countries? For example, there are twice as many self-employed people in West Germany as there are here. The number of the self-employed has increased substantially under the present Government. Why is self-employment not even mentioned in the motion? The Opposition assume that everybody must be given a job by some all-powerful being.

Mr. Holt: By the state.

Mr. Thurnham: Yes, by the nanny state.

Mr. Prescott: The hon. Gentleman is a state employee.

Mr. Thurnham: Under this Government, opportunities have increased for the unemployed. The wider opportunities training programme is showing excellent returns for the cost by providing extra employment opportunities. Why do Opposition Members not accept the challenge of the pick-up programme? Why do trade unionists not ask for extra training rather than extra pay? If we were to listen to the arguments advanced by Opposition Members, we would think that everything was coming to an end, but average weekly earnings now tell a different story. We have been given a catalogue of how dreadful employment legislation is, so how is it that weekly pay in manufacturing industry has risen to £155 — an increase of 8·25 per cent. on last year? If everything is so dreadful, how can such increases, which are substantially above the rate of inflation, come through?
Why can we not look ahead? Why do we not look forward to the fruits that can flow from increased productivity, rather than moan about doing away with industries that carried far more people than they ever needed? I refer to productivity in the steel industry and the coal industry. What of the figures that we heard last night? All of a sudden, the Kent coalfield has turned around and produced twice as much per man shift. Is that not the type of employment and productivity for which we should aim?
Every line of the motion is rubbish. The House should not condemn the Government's policies. It should condemn the Labour Government's policies. I am not surprised that Lord Wilson of Rievaulx resigned in midterm. I imagine that he could see all that was coming under his policies. The whole House has condemned the results of those dreadful policies. The country was suffering long before 1979.
The motion refers to burdens on women. Why are so many more married women now in work?

Mr. Prescott: Because their husbands have been put out of work by the Government. Look at some of the figures.

Mr. Thurnham: The hon. Member for St. Helens, North talked about wages councils. They are a classic case of an obsolete requirement which could only be called for by a retrospective party. Most of the workers in the industries concerned are on part-time work. Is not the family credit scheme the way in which to provide an adequate income, and much better than burdening employers to the extent that they can no longer offer a job?
The motion speaks of a reduction of internationally agreed standards, but productivity has risen far faster in Britain than it has in any of our competitor countries. There has been talk about fiddling the figures. The people who are fiddling the figures are those who are drawing benefit but are not available for work. Many have been shown to be fiddling the figures. When, in the latest pilot schemes, people have been asked to come in for an interview, a considerable proportion stop drawing benefit, to the extent that the welcome counselling schemes have been paid for by the reduction in benefits drawn. That is where the fiddling is.

Mr. Holt: When the inspector was known to be going to the unemployment exchange in Stockton, the number of claimants that week dropped by 10 per cent.

Mr. Thurnham: Exactly. Why can the Opposition not talk about that fiddling? The motion draws attention to international standards, but unemployment figures must now be calculated internationally. Why should we leave the self-employed and the armed forces out of the calculation so that the Opposition can go about saying that one in seven people are unemployed, although that is not the correct figure?
Every line of the motion can be shown to be utter rubbish.

Mr. Evans: This is tedious repetition.

Mr. Thurnham: The sole motivation for tabling the motion is the realisation that truth has at last caught up with large sections of the union world, especially at Wapping. It has been tabled as a last cry of a stranded whale which thinks that the sea will wash up far enough to take him back out to sea.
We have had a somewhat truncated debate and very good news of privatisation. The motion talks of poverty and strife being created. The standard of living of people in work is far higher than it was under Labour, and it is only by increasing productivity as a whole that we can do anything about the unemployed. My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Forrnan) talked about the need for measures to help the long-tem unemployed and referred to the Employment Select Committee's report. I am pleased to see that Committee's Chairman, the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) present. I was a member of that Committee and advocated taking measures to help the long-term unemployed, especially the increasing number of people who have been unemployed for three or more years. All who want such measures implemented must accept, however, that they have to be paid for. They can be paid for only by a thriving and growing economy.
I am disappointed in the motion and hope that Opposition Members will pay strict and close attention to my hon. Friend the Minister when he replies.

Mr. Martin J. O'Neill: I want to talk about the dispute at Wapping as a Member sponsored by the National Graphical Association and as one who takes an interest in the printing industry, as does my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans).
The last occasion on which we had a debate on the printing industry in Fleet street was at about this time last year but in the early hours of the morning. That debate attracted rather fewer hon. Members than today's. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, North on enabling us to debate this important issue.

Mr. Holt: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. O'Neill: If the hon. Gentlman were to stop interrupting other Members' speeches, he might have time to make one of his own.
We are concerned about the 6,000 people who have lost their jobs at Wapping. Many of us are interested in the printing industry. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton), raised that issue in an Adjournment debate from the standpoint of a SOGAT '82 member. I approach the matter from the standpoint of the National Graphical Association. The dispute was created by management. Management sought to impose conditions that no self-respecting trade unionist could possibly accept.
It might be useful if I recount the background to the dispute. In 1980 construction started at Wapping. In 1983 the first faltering steps towards discussions on the possibility of the transfer of production of The Sun and the News of the World to Wapping were taken. The management said that it wanted substantial cuts in the number of people to be employed there. At that time the unions felt that those demands were unreasonable. They saw that move primarily as a means of buying time so that other matters could take place.
It is fair to say that the individual who was placed in charge of the negotiations, Mr. Bill O'Neill—I hasten to add that he is no relation to me, though perhaps he is on his mother's side—had responsibilities in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. That elusive individual was not present for discussions until December


1984, when it was implied that negotiations would be suspended pending the employment of Mr. Christopher Pole-Carew as an adviser.
That is rather like inviting the Russian social democratic party—as it was before the revolution—to cease its activities pending the promotion of Rasputin to a more responsible position in the Tsarist hierarchy. Mr. Pole-Carew does not enjoy the confidence of the print unions, and he has had a somewhat chequered career in that area. His appointment is an example of the lack of good will on the part of News International.
In March 1985, Mr. Murdoch announced that there would be a new evening paper in London and that that would be launched in 12 months. In the intervening period there were virtually no discussions. It was only at the insistence of Brenda Dean, the general secretary of SOGAT '82, that discussions were arranged in December 1985. At that time the unions wanted a timetable for negotiations relating to the publication of the London Post. If progress could be achieved on the publication of the London Post, the unions wanted the talks to be extended to the production of the News of the World and The Sun at Wapping.
I am being deliberate in stating these facts, because one of the myths that has been created by Tory Members and others is that somehow there has been an inordinate delay in the negotiations and that that has been the fault of the unions. As I have said, in the period between 1980 and September 1985, most of the delays were the responsibility of the management in its appointment of controversial individuals with responsibilities elsewhere which were considered to be more important than meeting British trade unions.
One would have assumed that the negotiations over the London Post would have covered wages, conditions and staffing levels. Those are normally the fundamentals of any trade union discussion about production and new plant. Instead, the management laid down four non-negotiable conditions: that all agreements be legally binding on both the union and the individual; that no industrial action should take place in any circumstances; that there should be no closed-shop; and, finally, that there should be a complete, total and unfettered right of management to manage.
None of those conditions would be acceptable individually. As a group, they mean the end of trade unionism as we know it in Great Britain and as we know it throughout the Western world. I am sure that if Mrs. Aquino, in the Philippines, wanted to establish free trade unions in that country, the regulations and legislation that she would have to dismantle would be similar to the proposals that Mr. Murdoch put to the print unions in September 1985.
The National Union of Journalists, the NGA, SOGAT '82 and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers rejected those proposals out of hand. They were not, however, rejected on the basis that nothing should be put in their place. Significant advances from the point of view of Fleet street management were offered. They offered the indexation of wages and they sought the right of members to transfer should work be moved to Wapping. They also sought the right of union recognition in traditional areas in the printing process.
That, in turn, was rejected out of hand by News International, and a trade union ballot followed. That resulted in overwhelming majorities to back the unions' position although that position had slightly altered by that time. The unions now agreed to concede certain points. They conceded that there would be no unofficial industrial action and that official action would be taken only after a secret ballot. For those who study industrial relations in the British press, probably the most critical of the offers that were made was that there would be binding arbitration capable of being unilaterally triggered by either side.
An offer of that nature is unparalleled. Equally, the degree of support that was achieved for that in secret ballots was also unparalleled. SOGAT and the AUEW voted in favour, by majorities of 5:1 and the NGA by a majority of 7:1. Armed with the mandate of the membership, the trade union officials were in a position to deliver the goods in a way that management could not previously have expected. They went further than claiming that they would do that at Wapping. At that time, as I have already said, the unions were discussing only the possibility of producing a new evening paper at Wapping and the possibility thereafter of News International producing The Sun at Wapping. The conditions were now to be extended to Bouverie street and Grays Inn road where The Times and the Sunday Timeswere being produced.
Those offers were spurned. Mr. Murdoch's reaction was simple and straightforward. He reiterated his previous demands and added that not only did he want his previous demands met, but he wanted cuts in the Bouverie street and Grays Inn road plants to reduce a work-force of 6,000 to between 700 and 800, and those 700 or 800 workers would be engaged on conditions which would be of his dictating. There would be wage cuts as well as redundancies. Those people who would be subject to redundancies would get the national minimum rate of one week's pay for every year served, whereas the normal practice in the printing industry is for redundancies to be on the basis of one month's pay for every year served.
On 24 January 1986, following a secret ballot and the failure to reach agreement between management and unions, a strike was finally called, the work-force was promptly sacked, and 6,000 people have been out of work since.
At the same time, current legislation has enabled the Murdoch management to establish what have come to be known as buffer companies. In effect, they are shell companies, but they have acted as buffers between the management and the work force and allowed the management to seek to outlaw secondary action. That process started in March 1985.
According to a detailed article that appeared in the Financial Times of 20 February, two companies were incorporated on 7 March 1985. These were Worthystock and Sparkcrown. The headquarters of the companies was given as 66 Lincoln's Inn fields, the address of News International's solicitors, Farrer and Company. By 7 May, Mr. G. W. Richards of Farrer and Company resigned as the director of both companies to be replaced by Bruce Matthews and Peter Stehenberger, who are directors of News International. Mr. Bruce Matthews is an Australian citizen and Mr. Stehenberger is a Swiss citizen.
On 11 June, Worthystock and Sparkcrown changed their names to News International Distribution and News International Supply Company, respectively, the latter's objects being described as
the supplier of goods and services of whatsoever nature to proprietors, printers and publishers of newspapers, books, magazines and journals.
That process was continued when a firm called Tyrolese was established with two directors, Mr. G. W. Richards and Mr. J. Gordon. That was the same Mr. Richards. As before, by 2 September they had resigned and made way for Stehenberger and Matthews. Later, in September, the company changed its name to News International Advertising, with the object of providing advertising services to proprietors, printers and publishers, and so on.
That was the arrangement that was carried on throughout 1985. Shell companies were established in anticipation of industrial action and to frustrate any secondary action which might be taken under the law.
On 20 December a letter went from Mr. Richards, of Farrer and Company, to Mr. Matthews which had the explicit aim of securing the removal of the maximum numbers of the work forces of The Sun, the News of the World, The Sunday Times and The Times from their places of employment. The purpose was to remove those employees at the cheapest price and to secure the largest possible number of those individuals at the earliest opportunity thereafter as and when required. That was happening throughout the time when the unions were supposed to be engaged in meaningful negotiations with the management.
We know now what the management's motives were. News International was not seeking to introduce new technology. It is now well established and broadly agreed that the technology employed at Wapping is of an almost obsolete type in some areas. I was talking to some of the men at Wapping last night. They told me about the equipment which they believed to be in the plant. They believe that some of it is older than the equipment that they operated in Bouverie street and Gray's Inn road.
The fact is that Murdoch has sought drastically to decrease his costs. It is not his purpose to provide money for future investment in Britain. He is not seeking to provide further employment in Britain. That cannot be said of someone who is intent on reducing a labour force of 6,000 to between 2,000 and 3,000. No one knows how many are employed at Wapping. I stood outside the plant and watched buses going in that were carrying only two or three people. They were going in at speed, and I accept that they might have been carrying some who were lying on the floor—an exercise which is entirely unnecessary. The picketing at Wapping is peaceful. It is well organised and disciplined. It is carried out by men of the highest integrity. They are the essence of all that is best in British trade unionism.

Mr. Alan Howarth: I wonder what the trade unionists of the highest integrity to whom the hon. Gentleman has referred would think about a letter that Coventry city council sent to Lanchester polytechnic in Coventry, instructing it that no newspapers produced by News International were to be taken on the premises of the polytechnic? Can self-respecting trade unionists accept that in furtherance of an industrial dispute it is proper and acceptable that an academic institution should be denied the opportunity to take what newspapers it will, should be denied freedom of information and should be denied the free exchange of ideas?

Mr. O'Neill: Individuals have the freedom to choose. If a local authority wants to express solidarity with workers who are involved in a struggle, that is its privilege. 'The hon. Gentleman may buy South African grapes or Chilean wine; that is for him to decide. It seems that when trade unionists exercise similar decisions, it is a different matter.
Mr. Murdoch's actions have been concerned not with the introduction of new technology; They have been directed to an attempt to cut costs and to transfer massive profits out of the United Kingdom to finance his activities in the United States. There is something wrong with our corporate arrangements and company law when foreigners can come to Britain, acquire newspapers and export the profits, created by British working people, at the expense of workers' jobs. It would appear that they can export profits while undermining the working conditions of employees throughout an industry, leaving the British taxpayer with the bill for social security payments.

Mr. Chapman: rose—

Mr. O'Neill: No, I shall not give way. I have nearly finished. I know that the hon. Gentleman wants to participate in the second debate on the Order Paper and I would not want to prevent him from making that speech.
Employment rights of British workers are being undermined with every hour that the Wapping dispute continues. The idea that people should be working in the conditions that prevail at Wapping is intolerable. Anyone who visits Wapping will understand that the term "fortress" is not exaggerated. Last night I heard stories of what is supposed to be going on in the place. Wretched people are working in intolerable conditions. They are intimidated by a ruthless management. Ordinary honest people are being exploited. They are frightened because they know that there are no other jobs to which they can go.
My hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, North talked about the unemployment figures. The combination of inadequate company legislation and penal and spiteful anti-trade union legislation has led to massive unemployment and deterioration of the rights of working people. For those reasons, I commend the motion to the House.

Mr. Eric Forth: I wish to take the attention of the House from the detail that we have heard about Wapping from Opposition Members to issues of a more international flavour in considering a problem that faces so many countries. Unemployment is not a phenomenon confined to the United Kingdom. Regrettably, it is one that is common to Europe. I say "Europe" advisedly, because I wish to draw some comparisons between the experience of Europe as against that in the United States and that in the far east.
It is instructive to consider the unemployment rates of a number of countries in the industrialised world. There are some valid, interesting and instructive conclusions to be drawn from the figures. In Spain, for example, the unemployment rate has recently increased to 22 per cent.

Mr. Prescott: That is the only country where unemployment has increased, apart from the United Kingdom.

Mr. Forth: That is in Socialist Spain. In Ireland, a country with a coalition Govcrninent with a Labour party content, the unemployment rate is 18 per cent. In


Belgium, a country with a coalition Government, it is 16 per cent. In the Netherlands, it is 15 per cent. In Italy, which has a coalition Government, it is 14 per cent. Regrettably, in the United Kingdom, the unemployment rate is 13 per cent. In France, with a Socialist Government, the unemployment rate is 10 per cent. and increasing. In the Federal Republic of Germany, which has a coalition Government, the unemployment rate is 10 per cent. and increasing.

Mr. Evans: What about Greece?

Mr. Forth: We all know that unemployment in Greece is about 5 per cent. That is the official figure. My faith in Greek statistics is probably much less than the hon. Gentleman's faith in them. We cannot necessarily look to the political nature, or, therefore, the economic policies of different countries and draw a straight-line conclusion.

Mr. Evans: As the hon. Gentleman obviously studies these matters, will he confirm that there is no common basis for measuring unemployment within the EEC, and the Greek figures prove it?

Mr. Forth: I agree that direct international comparisons are not necessarily valid. The Greek experience is interesting. Is the hon. Gentleman able to challenge the broad validity of the figures I have cited?

Mr. Ron Leighton: Did the hon. Gentleman, in his tour of Europe also look at the social democratic countries of Scandinavia, Austria and Norway? Norway, because of its oil supplies, has an unemployment rate of less than 2 per cent. The figures in Sweden and in Austria are similar. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will mention those facts as well.

Mr. Forth: I shall draw attention also to the experience in the United States in the context of its political system, political control, economy and experience of trade unionism. I believe that it is genuinely instructive for the House to consider international comparisons to avoid being drawn into false conclusions about our unemployment and the solutions that are sometimes offered by the Opposition parties. Perhaps I should more accurately refer to the Opposition party because, although the Labour party is well represented, I have searched the Opposition Benches in vain to see any representation by the other political parties. We can all draw the obvious political conclusion about the concern, or lack of concern, of the alliance for this vitally important problem.
Let us consider the solutions that can be sought in terms of politics. We are often told—perhaps we would have been told today if any alliance Member had bothered to turn up—that coalitions are the answer to the problem. We are sometimes told that one of our great difficulties is the fact that we have had a two-party system for too long and that, if only we could introduce a more balanced system of Government, with a coalition and centrist policies, that would be the answer. The figures I have cited amply demonstrate that many countries with coalition Governments of various kinds have failed to solve their unemployment problems. The unemployment problems are shared with other countries of different political hues. It would appear that we must, therefore, look elsewhere for the answer.
We may be told that the answer lies in Socialist policies. It is instructive to consider the recent history of France. We well remember the euphoria in 1981 when the French elected a Socialist Government. We were told that that was the answer to their problems. We remember Mitterrand and his Government putting into effect precisely the same sort of policies that are advocated by the Opposition. We were offered nationalisation, price control and an expansion of the public sector — the entire panoply of policies that are new being trawled out yet again by the Labour party and which were put into effect in Socialist France as recently as 1981.
The inevitable happened. All the events about which we warn our people happened in France. Inflation increased and the balance of payments was adversely affected. Eventually, the Socialist Government saw the light and had to adopt policies that most Conservative Members would describe as Thatcherite. They were the sort of policies that we are pursuing and recommending.
Partly as a result of that, the recent French experience has been favourable. The inflation rate is decreasing and the balance of payments position is improving. There, in the most classic sense, is an example of a country close to us geographically and similar size and structure which demonstrates that the answer to the unemployment problem, which we all share, does not lie in Socialist policies.
Let us compare Europe as a whole with the United States. They are of similar size and population, but their experience in terms of employment is different. In the past 15 or 20 years, 20 million jobs have been created in the United States but no net new jobs have been created in the EEC. Why? Since the last war, most European countries have pursued policies that have broadly involved ever greater control, state intervention and burdens on employers, whether they are financial, regulatory or of any other kind. Yet, the approach in the United States has been totally different. It has involved a much freer attitude towards the business community, mobility of labour and, to pick up the point made by the hon. Member for St. Helen's, North (Mr. Evans), a much lower rate of trade union membership. Labour Members talk about trade union membership as though it were something to be valued, but the experience in the United States is somewhat different. In the United States, people realise that excessively high trade union membership and activity are counter-productive in terms of jobs and employment. It cannot be a coincidence that in the United States employers find that, where the incidence of trade union membership is relatively low, they have prosperity and success. That is the opposite of our experience in the EEC and in Europe generally.
In the United Kingdom, IBM is an excellent example of this. Time and time again, it has a balloted its labour force on whether it wants to have a trade union and time and time again the labour force has voted against it. Why? The answer is that the employer is a successful one. It treats its employees well. The employees realise that they are getting better treatment and conditions without trade union involvement than they would if they had it.
The conclusions to be drawn from all this are blindingly obvious. The approach taken in Europe as a whole, in the United Kingdom and in many other countries since the war has discouraged the growth of employment. I was privileged to serve in the European Parliament between 1979 and 1984. It was obvious to me that the repeated


attempts by the Brussels bureaucracy to devise ever more ways of regulating industry and the private sector were counter-productive. I believe that the Government have now identified the answer — reduce the number of restrictions and regulations on employers.

Mr. Evans: As the Government have spent six years deregulating, will the hon. Gentleman tell the House why, under the Conservative Government, unemployment has continued to increase month after month to the highest recorded level in our history?

Mr. Forth: Unemployment has been a phenomenon of the post-war era. Every Government in Britain since 1945 inherited higher rates of inflation and unemployment than their predecessor. We were involved in an inexorable process through that period. I am suggesting that at long last we have realised that excessive regulation by Government was contributing to the ever higher rate of unemployment. I welcome the move by the Government, having identified that, to take a series of policy steps to redress the balance and reverse the process from which we have suffered since 1945.

Mr. Holt: I wonder whether, during his research, my hon. Friend has looked at the Canadian experience under the current Government. They have created 580,000 jobs in the past 12 months.

Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I believe that he has identified another reason, from the policies being pursued in north America, why the motion before the House is totally misguided. The hon. Member for St. Helens, North is suggesting the usual tired old formula we have been offered so many times before and which has failed so many times before. As I have tried to suggest, it can be demonstrated, by comparison with other countries in Europe and the United States, that that formula will not work.
That is why I hope that the House will resist the motion and why I welcome the approach that the Government are taking to employment. I believe that the policies we are now pursuing give genuine hope for the future. They do not give in to the temptation to use what has failed in the past, and I believe ever more firmly that people know and understand that. When the people are offered another chance to choose at the next election, their choice will be the same and will be as wise as the choice on the previous occasion.

Mr. Eric S. Helfer: The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire, (Mr. Forth) was being extremely selective in discussing what happens in Europe. He did not discuss the position in Sweden, and he also ignored a number of other countries. The reason for the unemployment that has developed in western Europe, north America and elsewhere, where there is free enterprise and a competitive capitalist system, is to be found in the very nature of that system. As long as it continues, there will always be unemployment booms and slumps at varying levels.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) for giving us the opportunity to say a few words on this subject. The industrial relations legislation that has been brought in by dribs and drabs over the years since the Government came to office is the most anti-trade union and reactionary in the whole of Europe.

We are told that the position in some European countries is worse than it is here but unemployment has increased more rapidly in the United Kingdom than it has in any other part of Europe. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, North.
There is a myth, and it has been mentioned again today by Conservative Members, that the trade unions got out of balance and that the power of the trade unions was too great. The argument is not new. It was first developed in a Conservative party lawyers' pamphlet entitled "A Giant's Strength". It was argued a lifetime ago. Incidentally, that pamphlet echoed the view of people in the United States of America, who, after the war, introduced the Taft Hartley Acts which restricted the powers and rights of the trade unions in the United States. Ever since the Taft Hartley Acts, Conservative politicians in the United States have followed that practice and used that argument. It is not true, it was not true then, and it has not been true since. The trade unions never had a great balance of power tipped in their favour. They were never more powerful than any bunch of employers.
The point about trade unionism is that workers arrived at the conclusion early on that in this type of society they had to join together to defend themselves, and to argue collectively to try to reach agreement with their employers. If they tried to do it alone, they ended up in a disaster. Conservative Members want each individual worker to go it alone.

Mr. Forth: Yes.

Mr. Heffer: The hon. Gentleman is an honest Tory and says yes. He is saying openly what all Conservative Members think. That is their basic attitude towards the working-class and trade unionists. They do not want us to have rights, powers, or collectivism, but want us to act individually. When we do that, we are sunk. We have rights and powers only when we work together. Even in. 1906 British workers managed to convince a Liberal Government that something should be done to give them rights, which until then they did not have.
This Government have gone further than any other Government with anti-trade union legislation. The 1906 Act dealt with how unions' moneys could be used. It is an old argument to say that unions are above the law. The unions were never above the law. Immunities merely gave workers a certain measure of protection. Unions were never above the law. That protection has now been taken from workers and trade unions by this Government's legislation.
The Labour party has said that it will repeal the legislation, and we shall do so. We must therefore consider the sort of legislation that we shall put in its place. That is important, because we cannot merely get shot of Tory legislation and leave a big gap. We must give our people rights and protection.
When my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) was Secretary of State for Employment, he did a marvellous job. We are grateful to him for steering legislation through the House to get rid of the Industrial Relations Act 1971 when we were on a knife-edge. He also introduced legislation to restore rights to our people. We must do something similar.
When we introduce such legislation, I hope that it will not diminish the right of any worker to take industrial action. I am thinking, in particular, of workers who go on


unofficial strike. The position cannot always be nice and tidy, with a group of factory workers suddenly finding their shop steward sacked and holding an official ballot. In my day in the shipyards, workers answered that by walking out of the gate until the shop steward was restored, because they had elected him. If workers did not like the shop steward, they could remove him whenever they wished.

Mr. Forth: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Heffer: I shall not give way. I do not wish to make a long speech. I hope that when we introduce legislation we shall not even think in those terms.
I am, and always have been, in favour of ballots in the trade union movement. My union on Merseyside used to elect a Communist as district secretary every year—the great Leo McGree. If we did not like Leo, we did not have to vote for him. The district committee, of which I was proud to be a member, and which we used to call the management committee, was elected every year. I agree with that, but we can go a little too far in thinking that ballots must be held in all cases.
I thought that we had given the executives of unions, who should be elected, the power at any given moment to call out their memberships to deal with any matters. I hope that we shall restore that right. There has been much talk about ballots, but I do not remember a ballot when we went to war over the Falklands. I remember the group of people who were, regrettably, elected to Government taking a decision and sending our troops to fight in the Falklands. Constitutionally, they were right to do so. If we can do it in time of war, we must give union leaders the power to do the same thing, in certain circumstances.
As to the internal affairs of trade unions, the Government are acting rather like the Jaruzelski Government in Poland. They have the cheek to say that they support Solidarity, yet they interfere with our unions, in some ways more than the Polish Government have done with their unions. That is not acceptable. If my union wishes to ballot each of its members to elect its general secretary, that is a matter for it. We used to say that members had to attend branch meetings four times a year —we called them star nights—and members who did not attend were fined. Votes were always taken at those branch meetings which meant that any member could look through the lists to see how many people had voted for Bill Brown and how many for Fred Jones. It was the best check that we could have had, because all the votes were recorded, and we could see how many branch members voted for whom. I hope that those rights will be restored to trade unions.
We must get rid of this class legislation, which benefits employers to the detriment of the ordinary working class. Workers' rights must be restored and the class legislation swept away. I say to my hon. Friends that in doing so —I have heard arguments about a Bill of Rights, but I do not know exactly what that means—we must restore all the rights of the workers and give them extra rights that they have not had until now. The balance has never been tipped in favour of the workers, but always in favour of the employers. This must end.

Mr. Alan Howarth: We owe the hon. Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) a debt of gratitude for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject, and I regret the somewhat acrimonious and politically partisan flavour of the debate so far. All of us who have taken the trouble to be here regard unemployment as a great evil. It is a great evil that people, through no fault of their own, should be trapped in unemployment, and it behoves us to foreswear, as far as possible, mutual recrimination. We must analyse and consider carefully and fairly the nature of the problem, and try to understand its causes and see what remedies there may be.
Some major causes of unemployment are beyond the scope of this or any Government to control. One is demographic—the shifting balance of our population. The interacting effects of high mortality in the second world war and the baby boom of the 1960s mean that, during the 1980s, many more people are joining the labour force than are retiring from it. It is an objective, statistical fact that it would be necessary to create an extra 1 million jobs during this decade if we were to stand still in terms of registered unemployment. That factor deserves to be more widely appreciated.
A second major cause of contemporary unemployment has been the recession of 1979–1981 — the deepest, severest recession in world trade for 50 years. The causes of that recession—the oil price shock of 1979 and the worldwide withdrawal of Governments from budgetary and monetary excess—were again far beyond the scope and power of any United Kingdom Government to control. The painfully slow process of recovery from that recession has also been beyond the powers of the Government of our country to affect. Continuing high interest rates, currency instability, protectionism and the debt crisis are all reasons why the recovery from that deep recession has been agonisingly slow. A trading country such as ours, which exports some 30 per cent. of all that it produces, is inevitably highly exposed to world economic conditions and it is absurd to pretend that there is any way in which those enormous forces could have been sidetracked and this country sheltered from them.
A third major international cause of unemployment is the impact of new technology. By a cruel coincidence, while those other causes of unemployment have been operating we have been in a period of profoundly important technological change. The pyschological effect is clear for all to see. It induces deep pessimism and people frequently predict that there will never again be full employment, although there is really no reason to suppose that that will be so. In past periods of major technological change people have been similarly pessimistic. No doubt it was the fashionable orthodoxy of the day when the wheel was invented, and one can well imagine how people whose job it was to carry loads and haul weights would have feared very much for their future.
Fears of that kind are better documented during the Industrial Revolution, in the steam age when the impact of that new technology displaced people from old forms of work very rapidly and painfully. It was a natural human reaction on the part of the Luddites to destroy the new machinery on the assumption that there would otherwise no longer be any employment for them. Equally well documented, however, is the effect of that technological


change and the enormous growth in wealth throughout the 19th century in creating new job opportunities of a nature and pattern impossible to anticipate. The same will undoubtedly be true of the current information technology revolution.
The tragedy is that, for a period, new technology tends to destroy old jobs faster than it creates new ones. Unhappily, we are living through such a period. The job of political leaders and Governments in such a period is to explain what is happening, to take what steps they can to help those displaced in the process of change, and to remove the obstacles to change so as to shorten the period of adaptation.
Having drawn attention to three international causes of contemporary unemployment, it is right to consider some uniquely British circumstances and the way in which, through misguided policy in the past, we have saddled ourselves with a worse problem than we need have faced.
A distinctive feature of the British economy has been that many of our industries as well as our public services have been overmanned. By the end of the 1970s, overmanning was ubiquitous—not least in Fleet street, where it was a byword. We accommodated ourselves to that by allowing unit costs to rise and hoping that inflation and devaluation would somehow take care of the process. But in the end it did not work. We allowed this to happen very much because of the Socialist, corporatist ethos of the 1960s and 1970s, when big business and big Government were the vogue. Big business and big Government are a natural habitat for trade unionism. Sadly, too many trade union leaders attached less importance to assisting profitability and the creation of wealth in the interests of their members and society as a whole than to ensuring that the number of members in their own unions increased. In that way, too many connived in overmanning. That was unsustainable when the recession came and much of the overmanning was shaken out. It was a painful process. It need not have been so severe if we had not allowed the original overmanning to set in. The British people appreciate the reality. No one enjoys the experience. It is brutal and painful to go through such a rapid change, but the need for it is not doubted.
The second domestically generated cause of unemployment is the inflation that we allowed to establish itself in our economy. Every successive economic cycle since the war has been marked by new peaks of inflation followed by new peaks of unemployment. It is no coincidence that inflation, which doubled during the period of the last Labour Government, preceded doubling of unemployment.
Inflation destroys jobs in a variety of ways. Inflation saps the profitability of companies and undermines the capacity and confidence of people to invest. Inflation provokes aggression in pay bargaining because, naturally, pay bargainers want to recoup for their members the real value of earnings lost through inflation. That competitive aggression in pay bargaining means that the devil takes the hindmost, the weakest lose out and unemployment is increased.
Inflation leads to higher interest rates. In all those ways inflation destroys jobs. The Government are right to put the defeat of inflation at the top of their list of economic policies because it makes a direct contribution to remedying a major underlying cause of unemployment. There is no worthwhile trade-off to be had. We might once have been able to say that a little more inflation would be

justified in the interests of a little less unemployment. We can no longer say that. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Callaghan) told the Labour party conference in 1976 that important truth. He was wise and brave to do so at that time.
A further British domestic cause of unemployment is the excessive amount of public expenditure and the associated high levels of taxation that have been allowed to develop over a long period. The Earl of Stockton is fond of criticising the Government for the severity of their policies, but when Harold Macmillan left office as Prime Minister public expenditure represented about 33 per cent. of GNP. By the time that the Conservative Government took office in 1979 public expenditure was into the 40 per cent. area. Unhappily, it has remained at that level. Public expenditure at that level entails high interest rates and a whole haemorrhage, through high taxation, of profits from the wealth-creating sector of the economy and that leads directly to higher unemployment.
The Government have been right to make their first priorities restraining of public expenditure and lower borrowing. But they still must bring down the excessively high levels of taxation from which the economy suffers.
Some good starts have been made. The Government have introduced reforms to corporation tax. Obviously, it was sensible in our present circumstances to remove the bias in the corporate taxation system in favour of using machines and discriminating against the use of people. Small businesses in particular have low rates of corporation tax as a result of this Government's reform. That is a useful and important start to the process.
The same is true of the abolition of the national insurance surcharge, which the Labour party was driven to introduce when it was in power because of its excessive public expenditure. That was a tax on jobs. Indeed, national insurance is a payroll tax which is inappropriate during endemic high unemployment. I am glad that the Government have made a start on introducing a more rational pattern into the national insurance system. Perhaps we can go further in that direction.
I am glad that the Government are proposing to reform business rates. If we move to centralised decisions on the level of business rates, that will remove some of the worst excesses imposed by the high-spending, extravagant and irresponsible Labour-controlled local authorities.
However, I fear that rates will still be the heaviest single impost on businesses and that they will ignore the profitability of individual companies and remain a textbook case of taxation without representation. I hope that we shall be able to go further in reforming local government finance. The indiscriminate havoc that high rates wreak on businesses and., therefore, on employment: reinforces the strong case for tight control of public expenditure, particularly in local government.
The Government have embarked on a useful reform of capital taxation. The more that can be done to reduce capital transfer tax and capital gains tax, the more we shall be able to encourage wider share ownership, a more constructive, co-operative approach to industrial relations than our tradition adversarial pattern has allowed, more venture capital and more help to small businesses, which represent the best possibility for creating new jobs in our economy.
I know that the Government are also seeking reform of VAT. Decisions have to be taken on a European basis and


I am glad to have been assured that the Government are urgently seeking to lift the threshold at which companies have to pay VAT. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment, who is to reply to the debate, may be able to bring me up to date, but I know that in 1981 about 93 per cent. of VAT was paid by companies with a turnover above £100,000, yet 75 per cent. of companies have a lower turnover than that. Nevertheless, all those companies had to make VAT returns even though, after that whole laborious process, the net return to the Exchequer was minimal. I hope that we shall succeed in lifting the threshold at which VAT is payable from the current level of, I think, about £20,000 to perhaps £120,000. That would lift a tiresome and bureaucratic burden from small businesses which have to suffer considerable compliance costs.
Progress on income tax has not been as rapid as many of us wished, but the imperative was to reduce borrowing. Even so, the Government have reduced the basic rate from 33 per cent. to 30 per cent. and have increased the threshold at which individuals start to pay tax by about 20 per cent. in real terms. The more that we can keep tight control of public expenditure and allow the growth that is taking place in the economy to express itself in the private sector, the greater will be the possibility of bringing down income tax, with all the dynamic and stimulating effects that that will have on our economy and its propensity to create jobs.
The Government are moving in the right direction in all those ways, but I know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has also been involved in lifting the burden of bureaucratic harassment that the legacy of successive Governments has imposed on our businesses. The major asset, particularly of a small business, is the energy of the boss. If he has to spend his energy in form-filling and bureaucratic compliance, he will have less energy and less time and scope to run his business to create wealth so that he personally can take on more people and also contribute to the general prosperity of society and help to regain our overall capacity to employ people.
The Government have made important inroads into the apparatus of bureaucracy. Price controls, income controls, dividend controls, exchange controls and hire purchase controls have all gone, yet there are still far too many statutes, statutory orders, EC directives, local government directives, quangos and judicial tribunals making demands on businesses. Many statutory bodies are charged with responsibilities involving, for example, health and safety at work, that we must all accept in a mature and decent society, but a great deal of superfluous bureaucracy and regulatory activity remains.
I was delighted when the Government produced the White Paper "Lifting the Burden" in July last year. It is an extensive, detailed, nitty-gritty document which sets out a full agenda of useful reforms. I hope that the Government will press on with them so that we shall have a less claustrophobic atmosphere in which people can do business. All of that will be helpful.
There is yet another area where reform is needed and where reform is taking place but which needs to be pressed further. That is reform of the labour market. "The labour market" is a chill, economist's term but it describes very important human and economic realities. There has been much criticism by the Opposition during this debate of the

reforms of the industrial relations legislation that have been introduced by the Government since 1979. However, the cumulative effect of that legislation is enormously beneficial, not least because it strengthens the rights of individual trade unionists.
Its benefits are manifest in terms of industrial peace. During the last 12 months there have been fewer industrial disputes in this country than in any other year during the last 50 years. That must be a result in large part of the legislative reforms that have been introduced. It may be that we need to go further. I see no reason why freely negotiated collective pay bargains should not be enforceable at civil law, and the Government may judge it to be appropriate at a future date to introduce a change of that kind.
The reform of trade union legislation, combined with the reform of wages councils that were having very important effects upon the terms and conditions of work of about 3 million employees, is directly beneficial to employment. It was a crazy and destructive policy for wages councils to set minimum levels of pay that made it absolutely certain that the opportunities for employment, particularly of young people, were greatly diminished. Therefore I welcome the reforms that have been introduced.
I welcome also the encouragement that the Government's policies have given to labour mobility, the improved deal for early leavers in terms of pension benefits and the Government's support for personal, portable pensions. They are of great importance in achieving a more flexible, adaptable and mobile economy. That should go hand in hand with the necessary reform of the Rent Acts. It is very stupid if legislation has the practical effect of it not being in the interests of private enterprise to offer privately rented accommodation to those who may need to move from one area to another to find a job, who are willing to do so but who are prevented from moving because they cannot find a roof over their heads when they get there.
The education and training reforms that are taking place are all relevant to our need to produce a more skilled and adaptable labour force. This will be of long-term benefit to the prospects of employment.
There are no easy, quick solutions. Unemployment is a very complex problem. Those who care about unemployment ought to be willing to make an honest analysis of it and to consider fresh solutions. They ought not to object to a Government who challenge vested interests and who are prepared to reconsider the old othodoxies.
This Government's approach is to dismantle the obstacles to employment. The Labour party is tied to the old interests—the trade unions and public bureaucracies. It is tied to the old notions of large-scale Government intervention and large-scale Government spending. The Labour party proposes to go further. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) has a policy that is called "directed reflation". My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has provided a telling calculation of the cost of Labour pledges. He suggested—and it has not been repudiated —that if these pledges were to be implemented, value added tax would rise to about 41 per cent. That would plainly be absurd. The alliance simply wants to pull rabbits out of the hat and tinker with institutions. The Conservative approach is to liberate our economy, to work


with market forces, to remove distortions and to release private enterprise from fiscal and bureaucratic burdens. In 1979 and 1983 the British people welcomed this approach by the Conservative Government and I am certain that they will continue to endorse it.

Mr. John Prescott: The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) made a speech which reflected most of the speeches from that side of the House. It had little to do with the facts of the case or the judgments and issues involved. The hon. Gentleman said that what we had to do was reduce taxation and insurance payments in order to assist employment. The Government have done all that and we find that industry has gained about £15 billion in profits. That money did not go into investment, training or jobs. It went abroad to be invested in property and other kinds of investment. After six years, the achievement for which the Government had hoped has not materialised.
The hon. Gentleman discussed the question of how many days were lost through disputes. However, he actually spoke about how many disputes there are, rather than about how many days are lost. It is true that the number of disputes has halved but we are still losing almost as many working days through strikes, because although there may be fewer strikes they are bigger and they last longer. They are also more expensive. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the miners' strike cost £6 billion. The hon. Gentleman should pay attention to those important facts when he is addressing the House on such matters.
I offer my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) on his motion on employment rights. Conservative Members have said very little about employment rights. However, that is the subject of the motion and I want to use some of my time to deal with the reduction of those rights. My hon. Friend's excellent speech reflected his working experience and the length of time that he has spent in this House specialising in employment legislation. The House is richer for his speech. I want to follow up some of his contributions and deal with employment rights.
Very little has been said about employment rights. I was quite surprised when the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) said that he was not aware that there had been any reduction of employment rights. That convinces me that many Conservative Members do not know what they are voting for when they go through the Lobby. Since 1979 there has been a constant catalogue of reductions of rights, and it is important to put some of these on the record. It might even be useful to remind the Minister of such employment rights, because that is what the motion is about.
The motion is concerned with individual rights. The Government's great claim is that they are extending most of their legislation in the name of individual rights and individual freedom. Such rights have been guaranteed by international conventions which successive Governments have been prepared to observe within our legislation. I shall spell out precisely what this Government have done in regard to individual rights and freedom.
I must express my grave disappointment that the Minister for Employment is not here to defend the reductions in rights. I spend an awful lot of time trying to get Ministers, and indeed the Secretary of State, to appear

on television or to appear in the House to defend in open debate the measures that they follow. However, we have to learn from separate interviews—which they demand to do on their own—from articles or, indeed, as we have done, from the latest speech by the Minister for Employment, what Ministers consider to be important.
The speech of the Minister for Employment was made—a very convenient arena—at a Press gallery lunch. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blaneau Gwent (Mr. Foot) referred to the Paymaster General's speech when he said that he considered that the remarks made at that lunch gave some hope that the Government would do something about the print dispute. The Minister said:
Rupert Murdoch's personal public relations could do with a little improvement".
Public relations? This man was geared up to sack 6,000 workers; indeed, not only to sack them, but to deny them their redundancy and pension rights. He carefully designed that. If this is simply a public relations exercise, it says a great deal about the liberal image of the Minister.
Later on the right hon. and learned Gentleman said:
The Government will be watching the law on strikes with care…. We will watch to see whether unfair disciplinary action is taken against members who choose to work and keep their jobs".
If the Minister is concerned about justice, he should study the statisical analysis of the industrial tribunals, which shows that about 40 times more people are sacked because they are members of trade unions than are sacked because they are not members of a trade union. Perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman will concern himself with the injustices suffered by people who seek the human right to belong to a trade union. The right hon. and learned Gentleman came to the job with a liberal image, but he has been revealed to be as hard as anybody else about justice in industrial relations.
The motion is wide ranging and allows us to raise all the essential facets of industrial relations. We do not apologise for discussing the print dispute, the miners' dispute, or any other dispute. We do not duck the issue. We have a point to put. We believe that most of them are motivated and directly caused by the Government's legislation. That is why we shall repeal such legislation, lock, stock and barrel. I shall consider whether employment rights have been restricted and reduced, and the implications of disputes in the public mind, especially the miners' dispute or that involving News International.
I do not believe that anybody would argue that the right to work has been pursued since 1979. We can see that the Government's argument that reducing taxation will help to increase profits and lead to increased investment, increased employment, and lower inflation is patent nonsense, as we have been left with an extremely poor investment record compared with the rest of the European Community.
I have heard figures about unemployment. I should like to make it clear that the Labour Government inherited an unemployment rate of 1·2 million and that, when we left office, nearly 400,000 more people were in work although we had to contend with a population growth twice that experienced since 1979. We know that between 4·5 million and 5 million people are now available for work. The Government's labour force survey reveals that.
When we compare our economy with those of other OECD countries, we must go back at least one decade. High inflation and high unemployment have been features of most developed economies during the past few decades,


but the significant feature is that, under successive Governments, Britain's unemployment has always been at the average for the OECD. Since 1979, however, it has risen to about 2 per cent. above the average. The House of Commons Library has calculated that that increase is equivalent to about 1 million people out of work. The increase can be traced to the Government's policies. The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) picked out just a few countries which happen to be above Britain in the list.
In 1979, 10 of the 24 OECD countries had lower unemployment than the United Kingdom. In 1985, however—the last year for which figures are available—18 countries had lower unemployment than the United Kingdom. It is generally recognised that unemployment here has been higher, and that it cannot be put down solely to the world recession or to what has happened in other countries. There might be an argument about overmanning, which Conservative Members have deployed, but it cannot be argued that what has happened in Britain has been experienced in the rest of the Community.

Mr. Forth: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Prescott: I am afraid that I do not have time. It costs £20 billion to maintain such high unemployment. We believe that the Government have deliberately created unemployment in order to exercise a disciplinary sanction on the labour force. I have no doubt that mass unemployment is a deliberate part of Government policy. Their policies have created unemployment, and they knew that they would. I shall give some interesting evidence to support that view.
It is noticeable that the rest of the European countries are prepared to observe ILO convention 122. There is a new ILO convention which states that the Government will be prepared to pursue full employment as a matter of policy. Great Britain is the only European country which is not prepared to sign the convention and accept the commitment to provide full employment. That is a sign of the Government's priorities.

Mr. Forth: That is nonsense.

Mr. Prescott: The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire says that that is nonsense. I just note that all the other countries believe that that is a decent standard, and we should try to achieve international objectives such as full employment and decent working conditions. Other countries believe that such matters should be the normal part of 'any developed and civilised society. Great Britain constantly sets its face against decent standards.

Mr. Forth: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Prescott: No, I shall not give way. I want to spell out some of the rights.

Mr. Forth: What about my rights?

Mr. Prescott: I think that the hon. Gentleman has had his rights, and I want to show that he has denied rights to other people. I am not denying the hon. Gentleman much by denying him his right to intervene, but many workers have felt the lash of the hon. Gentleman's vote in the House in denying their rights. I shall spell out some of those rights to justify my point.
The Government have an unprecedented record in denouncing international conventions. Never in the history

of this country have we denounced international conventions on the scale that the Government have done. Never in the history of this country has there been such a rate of referral of cases to the European Courts of Human Rights. No other country has been taken to the Court of Human Rights so frequently since 1979. The Government are totally indifferent to the consequences of such referrals for civilised standards.
In the debate on the European Community earlier this week, when discussing treaty changes, the Government made it clear that they have a reservation about signing the new treaty. That information was given to me in a letter from the Foreign Office. Unfortunately I do not have time to quote the letter, but I shall show it to hon. Members if anyone is interested. That reservation is not about how much money we give to Europe or about the reductions in the power of Parliament. It is concerned with the working environment.
I shall quote just one passage from the letter dated 20 February from the Foreign Office:
The lifting of our reserve does not mean that the government has changed its attitude to the directive on parental leave, voluntary part-time work or employee consultation.
That means the Government have not changed their attitude to the Vredeling proposal that workers should have more information, consultation and representation. Those standards are accepted as normal in most of the more successful European economies, but are denied in this country. The one reservation that the Government had was on maintaining reasonable and decent standards for workers in industry.
I should like to discuss some of the conventions which the Government have denounced, thereby staining the character and civilised nature of this country. We have witnessed the Government not only denouncing of conventions, but setting their face against reducing the working week as a contribution to reducing unemployment levels. Britain is the only country that is setting its face against what clearly must be, if one believes in full employment, a contribution to reducing unemployment. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree with that proposition. The Government clearly do not.
The Government denounced the 1982 ILO convention 94 which called for fair wages to be paid to people. The Government's argument then was that their action would lead to more jobs. If anyone believes that the repeal of the fair wages legislation in hospitals and privatisation schemes led to better conditions he has not examined what actually happened, and in particular what happened to the Barking women, who were on strike for 12 months. There have been lower wages, fewer holidays, and fewer people in work. That policy is evident throughout the negotiations normally covered by fair wages. The facts do not bear out the idea that that brings more jobs.
The 1983 ILO convention 95 is now being dealt with upstairs in Committee. Under this proposal we will allow employers to deduct, almost at will, all manner of things under the Truck Acts. Other nations keep these provisions, but we will remove them to allow the employer more rights to make deductions from a worker's wages and to remove further protection for the individual.
The 1985 ILO convention 26, which is before the House, has led the Government to denounce the convention's proposals on minimum wages and wage councils. Wage councils and Sunday openings are


concerned with reducing the amount of wages and the number of people employed in industries concerned, in which the wage level is about £50 a week. Apparently it is believed by some hon. Members that such wages are excessive and that we must introduce legislation so that they can be reduced. There are many hon. Members who spend more on a lunch than the sum they believe to be a fair wage. They wish to remove minimum wage provisions for those who are least able to defend themselves. By introducing such legislation the Government will not be hitting the wealthy. They are not covered by minimum wage regulations. They are doing very well in the City and they do not need the protection of such regulations. Instead, they will be hitting the low-paid and the nonunion organised, two-thirds of whom are women.
The Government's record of reducing the rights of women has been deplorable and unprecedented. The Government's proposals will have an adverse effect on two thirds of working women, who are already earning less than two thirds of the wages paid to male labour in the same areas of work. The Government have reduced maternity rights and have disadvantaged pregnant women. Their rights to go to arbitration and to appear before industrial tribunals have been restricted. For a time the Government resisted the concept of equal pay, equal value. Current legislation provides for the taxing of work place nurseries and there is discrimination against women in community programme work.
There has been a reduction of employment protection for women working at night. The right of women to work at night in the same way as men is put as a new right, but it has been done to extend the pool of cheap female labour. It is said constantly that the previous Labour Government reduced the number of wages councils. They did, but there were some essential differences. The Labour Government got rid of wages councils if they were convinced that there was proper collective bargaining at the place of work and reasonable wages. They asked ACAS to produce an independent report on the conditions in the industries concerned. That is rather different from getting rid of minimum terms and regulations applying to wages and premium hours, for example.

Mr. Trippier: We are not getting rid of wages councils.

Mr. Prescott: That is the sort of rhetoric that we have come to expect from the Minister. The Government have embarked on a number of major reforms, and that is why they have had to denounce international conventions. They have had to do so because of the major changes that they wish to introduce. The changes will hit especially the low-paid, particularly women.
That brings me to the Government's attitude to collective bargaining and collective representation for trade unions. The breach of conventions to which I have referred extends to European legislation and the European Court of Human Rights. A notorious example is the breaching of the ILO convention on the freedom of association. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon told us that he is a director of an association that is concerned with freedoms. However, he voted in favour of what the Government chose to do to trade unions and trade unionists at GCHQ. Individuals who wanted to remain in trade unions and wished to retain that right were crushed by the legislation which the Government put on the statute book

with the support of the hon. Gentleman. They were denied the right to belong to a trade union. They were almost accused of being subversives and spies who were giving away information.
It is interesting to consider the Government's different approaches to confidential and security information and the breaching of it. We know what they did to Miss Tisdall and Mr. Ponting, and we know also that when the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) did the same thing openly; not a word was uttered about prosecuting him. The right hon. Gentleman was responsible for the prosecution of civil servants who had released information. In one instance, the courts found that there had not been a breach of security.
Civil servants have been denied basic rights, and women's rights have been restricted, to say the least. If anyone hopes that our courts will defend rights of freedom, any reading of a House of Lords judgment that took up this issue will find that the right has been given to the Government to determine what is a matter of security, and then to crush the rights of those who work in the areas where these matters arise, even if there is no evidence to justify their determination.
That judgment is an important factor in regard to the rights of those who were faced not only with the sack and pressure, but with bribes. They were bribes in the sense that the Government believe that one can purchase anything if the price is right. Many brave trade unionists refused all those financial inducements and resisted those pressures. They are still fighting for the right to join a trade union. A Labour Government will, without hesitation, return that right to the people involved in that struggle for trade union and civil rights.
It is no wonder, with the Government taking this action on industrial relations, that many employers adopt a similar attitude. It is no wonder that MacGregor was imported to take those actions in the mining industry, at a major cost to us. Ten months after the strike there is still no fair assessment of whether a pit should close. as we were told constantly in the past there would be. About 500 miners still do not have their jobs back, even though the industrial tribunals and courts have found them innocent of the charges laid by the NCB. No one rushes in to ensure that their rights are protected and justice observed in a state industry.
The Government were indifferent to what was to happen. According to The Guardian of 28 February, MacGregor has entitled one of the chapters of his new book, "How we made Scargill start the strike". We know that MacGregor's methods were similar to those that Murdoch claims for the strike that he started. The Guardian article of 28 February refers to the panic at No. 10 and how Mr. MacGregor was summoned and told by the Prime Minister:
The fate of this government is in your hands.
If that had been said to the trade unions, every Conservative Member would have said that Britain was being run by the trade unions. If it is a manager or a boss, and the Prime Minister whines that the future of Britain is in the hands of MacGregor, we hear not one protest about the Government's responsibilities and rights.

Mr. Heffer: Does that not underline the Government's nonsense during the miners' strike, when they said that they were neutral and that they were not fighting the


miners, but were standing apart from the battle? Is it not proof that, from the word go, the Government were against the miners and did their best to crush them?

Mr. Prescott: There is no doubt about that. MacGregor certainly believes it. We shall have to wait to hear whether the Government deny that case. MacGregor was certainly party to that action. He has made that clear. Small employers are being encouraged in the same way. The Silentnight dispute is still going on.

Mr. Trippier: It is small.

Mr. Prescott: It is a small dispute and a small employer compared with the scale of the miners' strike and the NCB, but a great justice issue is involved. No one cares to hear the concern of the employees or to help when that employer smashes his point of view on the employees at Silentnight.
I have written to the Minister for Employment about another multinational in Lincoln — the brake maker, Clayton Dewandre. That United States multinational company has moved in. It wants a new contract and wants to reduce the labour force. It want to pay lower wages and to negotiate away many workers' rights. This is what is called a "give back" deal. Give back everything to the employer, and he offers the possibility that one in two employees will get a job.
The same is true of BP shipping. We have got rid of our BP fleets and given the company over to a management enterprise body which has negotiated a new contract. This contract is made under Swiss law, and our people have to accept the terms and conditions laid down under that law. They have to give away the rights which they are guaranteed in our legislation and indeed by the ILO convention.
Murdoch's actions are perhaps the most offensive of all. Many hon. Members have referred to the News International dispute. Murdoch has been spilling the beans in The Guardian, which refers to the interview that he gave to the New York Times. The Guardian states:
Mr. Murdoch disclosed that long-term meticulous planning went into his Wapping set-up to ensure that in the case of a strike he could fully exploit the Thatcher Government's trade union laws.
That is painfully clear. There cannot be any doubt about it. That is precisely the accusation that we make against Murdoch and News International. He planned the dispute, set up the fortress factory, surrounded it with barbed wire, and introduced fleets of lorries, posses of lawyers, courts and injunctions to make the best use of the legislation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) made clear precisely how that policy had been pursued. He even mentioned how much money Murdoch was to gain from the actions. He said that £80 million would be saved on the redundancy payments out of that agreement. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent made clear, that issue has exposed a number of important matters to which we have to address our minds in any future industrial relations issues.
This dispute has exposed such things as the refusal to negotiate. Murdoch would not have been able to refuse to negotiate in America, but apparently he can do so here. It has exposed the fact that ballots of the workers, even if they agree with the dispute, carry no influence whatsoever. It has exposed the use of a breach of contract,

which has been central to our industrial relations law, to deny the basic rights and provide for the sequestration of trade union funds.
The judge dealing with the sequestration said:
The purpose of the court was to uphold the rule of law and not become immersed in the complexities of industrial relations.
He went on to say that he was not concerned with the merits of the dispute. Somebody should be concerned with the merits of the dispute. The House should be concerned and should support call for ACAS intervention.
If we have legislation which shifts the balance to the employer, which is what this legislation does, and has little to do with justice or collective bargaining, it is about time that the legislation was reviewed. The secondary picketing rights and the secondary action rights which the Minister referred to on Monday have already been used in courts and been thrown out by them. They have no meaning whatsoever. Therefore Murdoch was able to set up new companies and avoid even what limited rights were put into the Government's legislation.
It is clear that the legislation was designed solely to assist the employer, and many unscrupulous employers are using it to that effect. That is why we have more use of sequestration and more use of the courts. That is not in the legislation, but it comes out of the use of the courts in a way that employers have never made use of them before. That is a major development in creating greater confrontation and less legislation. We believe that the Government's legislation is designed to increase that confrontation. Our job is to achieve the very opposite—co-operation.
Let me make it clear, as I have before, but it is sometimes misunderstood, that we will get rid of the trade union legislation introduced by this Government. We say that, not with any embarrassment or as an ideological necessity, but because we recognise the need to bring cooperation back into this country and to obtain the cooperation necessary to get the economy moving again. In case anybody thinks that that is a peculiarly Socialist view, I should point out that most of the countries which have better economic records than ourselves, higher levels of employment, and higher levels of inflation because of higher levels of investment, have achieved that with legislation which at least guarantees the rights which this Government have stripped away, such as the right to information, consultation and representation.
All those are positive rights which the Labour movement is now discussing in the review of that legislation. I believe that a positive framework of legislation can be found for that. Ireland, which has a similar legislative base to our own has similar complaints and is now reviewing and changing the legislation in a fundamental way which may differ from our approach. The Labour movement has started its discussions, and by the end of the year the form of our legislation will be clear. The electorate will not be in any doubt that we shall have a different form of industrial democracy to extend democratic rights of individuals at their place of work which are presently denied by the Government. That will be underpinned by trade union legislation to achieve that end.
It is deplorable that a Japanese company such as Nissan can buy time on television in this country to tell Britain that its workers in Japan work with the management, that they sit down in the same canteen and wear similar overalls. It says that by these means it gets greater


productivity, co-operation with the trade unions and better investment. What a comment on the state of industrial relations in Britain that that is put forward as a good example to follow. It may be a good example. We want co-operation. I am not saying that we want the same as that, but the Labour movement has started putting together its alternatives ready to be placed before the electorate.
The workers have a major contribution to make in getting our economy together. They should have democratic rights at their place of work which are not taken away from them when the gates close behind them. We shall put those rights in a framework which will begin to achieve what we know we can achieve — getting people back to work while guaranteeing them justice and democratic rights in the name of democracy, which the trade union movement has been more to the fore of bringing about than have the Government.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. David Trippier): I congratulate the hon. Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) on initiating this debate. Labour Members have frequently referred to employment rights. I, too, am extremely concerned about employment rights, and the rights of those who do not have jobs. I am concerned about the rights of employers to employ people without being cluttered with a whole raft of unnecessary regulations. The hon. Gentleman is concerned about the protection of the rights of those who have a job. I am concerned about the encouragement of enterprise and the creation of genuine jobs. I am anxious to develop a whole range of policies designed to improve the flexibility of the labour market and to equip individuals for the jobs that are becoming available.
I am sure that I do not need to remind the hon. Gentleman or the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) of the winter of discontent in 1979, which led to the fall of the Labour Government. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) conveniently forgot about that. Throughout the country there is no doubt about what led to the demise of the Labour Government. It was on every television set and in every national newspaper.

Mr. Hafer: I did not forget that. At the time I told my people that they were taking a stupid step in taking on the trade union movement by making an unnecessary 5 per cent. calculation about wages. If the hon. Gentleman had been in the House for as long as I have, he would know that I said that from the Government side at that time.

Mr. Trippier: I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman, and if he says that he said that, I am sure that he did. My point was not about the 5 per cent. limit but about the flying pickets. Trade unions benefited from the legislation introduced by the Labour Administration, legislation for which the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) was partially responsible. It was wholly unacceptable, and led to the demise of the Government of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member.
Obviously, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East wishes to forget that, and the hon. Member for St. Helens, North did not even refer to it. One of the most damning indictments of the effects of the industrial relations that were perpetuated by the Labour Government

came from a committee set up by the former Labour Prime Minister, now Lord Wilson of Rievaulx. The Wilson committee commissioned a firm of consultants to conduct a survey into constraints on investments facing companies. High-ranking representatives in many medium-sized companies were interviewed and the report states that the researchers were
frankly surprised at the strength of feeling that was held
on employment legislation by many companies. The main concern was that companies experienced increasing difficulties in adjusting the size of the work force to fluctuations in market conditions. The report continued:
The great majority of companies surveyed were therefore extremely cautious in taking on labour and we were left in no doubt that this adversely affected investment decisions, including in some cases, the choice between the United Kingdom and some overseas countries.
As one company finance director put it:
Labour used to be a variable cost, it is now becoming a fixed overhead and so I need to be much more sure of an investment proposal's viability before I will sanction it.
That is an important point, but no Labour Member has said a word about the effect on employers of the bureaucratic legislation that the Labour Government introduced.
The survey took the opinion of those who employ the people to whom Opposition Members refer. It tickles me to death to listen to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East because he merely continually puts the case for trade unions and trade unionists, as if jobs are manufactured from thin air. Who employs those people? The hon. Gentleman will have to face facts. If he continues to preach the propaganda that we have heard today—that he will repeal every part of the legislation that we have introduced since 1979—it may please his hon. Friends, but it will frighten to death the employers whom we are trying to encourage to increase their work forces.
When we decided to remove the bureaucracy mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) and Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham), we set out as one of our main tasks the repeal of the Employment Protection Act 1975 to loosen the straitjacket of regulation. We look several steps to relieve that burden, the most important of which was the qualifying period for unfair dismissal. It was increased from six months to one year generally, and later to two years in firms of 20 or fewer employees. But because we and the Wilson committee had listened to what employers wanted to establish a fairer balance, although we wished to protect the rights of individuals, we wished to introduce a balance so that employers would be encouraged to employ people.
That point was absent from the speech of the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent. 'When he was Secretary of State for Employment I have no doubt that he approached the problems of trade unions and industrial relations in as responsible a way as he could. He passionately believed that he was doing the right thing, but the legislation for which he and his right hon. Friends were responsible encouraged employers not wily to shed labour but, in many cases, to be terrified of taking on just one more person.

Mr. Foot: The Minister must consult the document published by the Department of Employment. After all the effects that he described, more people were employed, not fewer.

Mr. Trippier: I understand that the right hon. Gentleman referred to that document. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire talked about the increase in employment, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East. It is significant that since 1983—it takes some time for a new Government to deregulate legislation that was wrongly put on the statute book—until the present day, there was an increase in employment far greater than that in any other member state of the EC. The right hon. Gentleman cannot deny that.
All that I am saying is that we need a fairer balance—a balance which the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East did not try to strike in his speech.

Mr. Leighton: What about Wapping?

Mr. Trippier: I shall deal with Wapping, for the second time this week, and I shall return to the remarks made by the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent.
The Government are trying to strike a balance. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East must accept that if he continues between now and the election to peddle the story that he peddled today, many people will be so frightened that they will look abroad, as they did during the life of the previous Labour Government. He must start thinking carefully about obtaining the right balance between trade union rights and employers' rights. Employers will provide jobs in the future. He cannot expect the Government, national or local, to provide all our employment. The vast bulk of jobs are in the private sector, and the hon. Gentleman forgets that 96 per cent. of firms in the private sector are small — employing between one and 200 people.

Mr. Prescott: With record bankruptcies.

Mr. Trippier: And the highest number of start-ups. The hon. Gentleman will have to get up a bit earlier to catch me out on this. The net increase in small firms is the highest in recorded history and the number of self-employed is the highest in 60 years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) pointed out.
We want to free those employers from red tape. I shall endeavour to explain to the Opposition how we have preserved the basic rights of employees. I make no apology for the Government's reform of the wages councils, of which the hon. Members for Kingston upon Hull, East and for St. Helens, North made such great play. Contrary to the claim of the hon. Member for St. Helens, North, we are not discriminating against young people. We are discriminating in their favour by removing the wages council constraints so as to give people under the age of 21 the most important thing that we can give them—a foot on the first rung of the employment ladder.

Mr. Prescott: By sacking their mothers.

Mr. Trippier: As for employees' rights, the hon. Gentleman gives the impression that we have scrapped the lot, but as he well knows, in the Wages Bill—now in Standing Committee—we are increasing the rights of the workers. We are abolishing the Truck Acts, which date from 1896 and are completely outdated and archaic, but we are building in new protections to limit the deductions made from employees and to ensure that they are told about their new rights in terms of the employer's ability to make deductions if necessary.

Mr. Prescott: We did that.

Mr. Trippier: It was in the Bill from the outset. We were not persuaded into it by the Opposition in any shape or form. It is absurd for the hon. Member for St. Helens, North to suggest that we have dismantled the system of employment rights that we inherited. We are modernising it to bring it up to date and into tune with the spirit of enterprise that we are endeavouring to foster.
The word "enterprise" was absent from every Opposition speech. The Opposition do not understand the meaning of the word. They do not understand small firms. They think that they understand co-operatives and are suprised to find a Minister who also favours co-opertives, but they do not understand small firms. Yet 96 per cent. of firms are small. They are the employers who will increase employment in this country. The very large firms are scarcely likely to increase their share of the employment market, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon made clear. As a result of advanced technology and improved productivity per man, they are more likely to shed employees than to take on more. We must therefore look to the 96 per cent. of small firms who have to consider the balance of choice in deciding whether to take on another employee.
Of course we are prepared to go some way to meet the points made by the Opposition by introducing new rights such as those being dealt with in the Standing Committee on the Wages Bill — and so we should. That is fair enough, but in introducing this new legislation we must constantly remember that we must strike a balance. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East never mentions the word "balance". He talks about co-operation but he never in any speech refers to the burdens which may be on the shoulders of business men and employers. [Interruption.] We shall be fascinated to hear exactly what the Opposition intend to do in the unlikely event of their ever returning to power. We have heard about every dot and comma of what the Leader of the Opposition has said. The Opposition do not know what they are saying and what the effect will be, but I am happy to let them go on saying it—indeed, I encourage it.
The past seven years have seen major changes in the British industrial relations scene. We have come so far that it might be difficult for the Opposition to remember how things were before our step-by-step legislation began. The time before was the age of the shop steward. It was an age when the moderate majority were manipulated by the militant few. The so-called heroes of that age were men like Red Robbo and Jack Dash, who were notorious for spending more time outside the gates than at work.
What has happened since? The names that make folk history now are Declan Hughes, the farmworker, who wanted to know why the Transport and General Workers union would not publish its election results by branch, and Medlock Bibby, who walked through a dockers' picket line in protest at an unconstitutional strike. We must not forget Silver Birch, who, with those other working miners, simply asked Arthur Scargill to keep to the union rules. There is not a shop steward among them. They are ordinary working men. The fact is that 99 per cent. of shop stewards today have never led a strike.
I went to some lengths to avoid mentioning personalities in the Wapping dispute during our debate on Monday. That did not please the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent or his hon. Friends, but I do not want to say anything to exacerbate the dispute. I take on board one comment by the right hon. Gentleman in relation to that


dispute. He said that ACAS could have a significant role. I understand what he says and am sympathetic. ACAS is following the dispute closely. The right hon. Gentleman will welcome that. It is willing to make itself available at any time. The right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues must not keep asking to become involved. They tried that, with the beer and sandwiches at No. 10, when they were in power.

Mr. O'Neill: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Trippier: I am sorry, but I am running out of time. I must sit down so that other hon. Members can make their contribution. I have allowed several interventions.

Mr. O'Neill: Give way.

Mr. Trippier: No. I am desperately anxious to reply to other hon. Members.
I have a considerable amount of time and some respect for the hon. Member for St. Helens, North. I must say to him, in the nicest possible way, and without embarrassing him—no doubt this will be struck from the record in his local paper so that it will not do him any harm—that before he thinks too much about turning the clock back, he should recognise that to go back to the 1970s and the flying pickets, the car park democracy and the worst strike record in Europe, would be disastrous. This Government's sights are set on the 1990s and beyond. We are fortunate to have a good starting point in that this is a period of the greatest industrial peace since the last war.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: One of the problems that Tory Ministers have had in the last two or three years is trying to be credible about their 1979 policies. My guess is that many people in the post-1979 period had the impression that it just might be possible, after that so-called winter of discontent—I describe it as something else—that the Tories had an answer. For about two or three years a lot of people bought that idea. The trouble is that after seven years people have come to the conclusion that the policies are not working. The Tories have had seven years to get the so-called new entrepreneurial society off the ground, to reduce the dole queues and to stop the bankruptcies, but none of it is coming right. That is the problem that they have to face between now and the next election.
In view of statements made in the past few weeks by MacGregor and other notable people, especially Murdoch, more and more people are concluding that the Government are hand in glove with the bosses and will do everything possible to hammer the trade unions, put more people out of work, have a dole queue of 3 million to 4 million as a reservoir of labour and depress the wages of those in work.
Reference has been made to the so-called winter of discontent. I cannot remember any NUPE flying pickets then. I remember flying pickets during the miners' strikes in 1972 and 1974, because I took part in them, but there were none anywhere in 1978. The Minister ought to get his facts right before he makes such nonsensical remarks.
I say to my hon. Friends who may have jobs in the next Labour Government that the real problem in 1978 was that the then Labour Government got enmeshed in an incomes policy. The result was that a lot of low-paid people said, "What's going off here—5 per cent. for us and 5 per cent. for those on £20,000 and £30,000 a year, with a few perks for them on the side? We are not buying that." I say

to my hon. Friends that next time they should not talk about workers' rights if they are prepared to have an incomes policy for people on low pay.
There will never be an incomes policy for chartered accountants or solicitors; they never have an incomes policy round their necks. Members of Parliament never have an incomes policy; they have catching-up exercises. All the top salaried people who got 46 per cent. rises under this Tory Government last year never have incomes policies. The posh papers say, "They have not had a rise for the three years." But who wants a rise for three years when they know that they will get a 50 per cent. rise at the end of those three years and will be carted about in a free car and have all the rest of the perks?
I hope that we will not have any more nonsense about an incomes policy, and I hope that the motion has no hidden references when it talks about co-operation. I hope that it is not suggested that trade unionists should have to co-operate with the Government in a 5, 6, 7 or 8 per cent. pay policy.
I wanted to get that on record before anybody accused me of giving in to a new co-operative Utopia. I do not believe that we can build that sort of co-operation in a capitalist society. We might get it when we have Socialists running the economy and when Socialists are running the banks and all the companies that are currently being sold to America. When we have companies in charge of the economy that are accountable to the state and the people, we can talk about doing something else, but not until then.
The march last Sunday vias about justice. The 10,000 people who marched in London were in some ways protesting about many of the things that have been said in this debate. People from Wapping joined the miners because they knew that they had had their rights ripped from them by Murdoch, in collaboration with the Government.
I do not think that there is any doubt that the conspiracy that has been revealed between MacGregor and the Government has been repealed at Wapping. Indeed, I am prepared to go on record. The enterprise zone in docklands was meant to provide new jobs. The Government said, "Let's set up an enterprise zone. We will put Bob Mellish, or someone like him, in charge and create jobs for the Wapping people." That was the idea, but Murdoch went down there and, instead of taking 5,000 jobs and adding a few more, which should be done in an enterprise zone, he reduced the 5,000 to 500 and brought the workers not from Wapping, but from Southampton and Bristol.
My guess is that when the enterprise zone was set up, this Tory Government were in collaboration with Murdoch. We may have to wait for a few years, but when Murdoch has fallen out with the Prime Minister, when she has had a diplomatic illness and left the scene and is making up the blue curtains at the £500,000 house in Dulwich, Murdoch may follow MacGregor's example and spill the beans.
On the march last Sunday I saw people who were casualties of the Tory Government. I saw people from GCHQ who were marching and who are still saying to the British nation, "We were deprived of the simple civil liberty of being able to belong to a trade union." This Government have rabbited on for years and years about the right to belong to a trade union, but, in the case of GCHQ, the Government say that there is no such right. Members of the Health and Safety Executive were also on that march. They said what many Opposition Members have


repeatedly said in the House: that one of the ways in which this Government are attacking the rights of workers is by cutting back on the Health and Safety Executive so that private employers do not have to pay their whack if, through negligence, people are killed in factories. Since this Government set up the youth training scheme, 14 kids have been killed.
There were other people on the march as well. There were miners from Scotland, like Bob Young who has been deprived of getting his job back, even though he did nothing wrong during the strike. There were others from Polmaise who went down that pit during the strike because the National Coal Board said that it was being flooded. Two or three Scots miners went down to protect the pit and to act as safety men. Because they did that they were sacked by this vicious NCB which is in league with the Government. People from every coalfield in Britain were on that march. They all tell the same story. They are among the 550 who have been sacked and victimised by the National Coal Board and the Government. They want the next Labour Government to ensure that their rights will be protected, even when there is an unofficial dispute.
The people on that march were joined by one of the newest recruits, Paul Whetton, the branch secretary of Bevercotes colliery in the Nottinghamshire coalfield. There are now NUM branches in every single village and pit in Nottinghamshire. Paul Whetton pinned up a notice on the colliery's notice board. That was always done in the past, but, because this is primarily the territory of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, he got the sack for pinning up that notice. Paul Whetton's treatment has to be compared with that of Mr. Foulstone, who took the miners to court. He has not been victimised. He, dollar thief, went to gaol, came out, and, unlike the 500 or so miners in Durham, Scotland, the north-east and the Midlands, got his job back. He is working for the National Coal Board.
The Minister, with his silly grin, does not care tuppence because he is not interested in justice. He never has been. He showed his true colours when he was mouthing against the Silentnight workers. Every hon. Member who was in the House that night and heard his vicious tones will remember what he said about the owner of the Silentnight factory, Mr. Tom Clarke, a friend of the Prime Minister — just like Mr. Abdul Shamji and all the rest of the crooks that this Tory Government have lined up ever since they got into power. They are not on the side of the workers. They are on the side of all those poeple in the City, and they always have been.
When Johnson Matthey went under, because it was an uneconomic unit of production, someone got on the phone to the Prime Minister and said, "It's uneconomic. Shut it." But the Chancellor of the Exchequer was there, and he said, "No, it's not a pit; it's a bank." So the right hon. Lady said, "Save it, then. It's one of us." That is why this Government do not care tuppence about hounding Peter Cameron Webb and Peter Dixon, who got away with £39 million from Lloyd's. They have not bothered to send the fraud squad across to America where they are living the life of Riley. No, they are more concerned about hammering the workers—miners, print workers, and the rest.
That is why at the next general election— starting with Fulham, which is not long away—this Government will be shown to have reached the end of their tether.

People are fed up with hearing all this noise about cutting taxes and creating an entrepreneurial society. When taxes have gone up by 5 per cent. and when all these liberties have been stripped away from working class people, the result of the next general election will show that people have seen through the injustice that permeates every single pore of every single member of the Cabinet.
I am pleased that we have had this debate. It has given us a chance to put on record what we feel about this Government's attack on working class people. I am confident that when the Government face the challenge of the next election, they will be defeated because of the way that they have treated ordinary working class people. The Government have treated them with contempt. At the same time, they have looked after their own class — the bosses, the bankers, the people at Lloyd's. Those people have got five or six different jobs, but there are 5 million people out of work who are desperate to find enough money to maintain their families. They will provide the verdict in the next election.

Mr. Lewis Stevens: I congratulate the hon. Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) on bringing to the House the many issues contained under the heading of his motion "Employment Rights". In many respects I do not agree with the motion but there are one or two important words. One such word is co-operation and the other is conciliation. If one goes round the country today, one will see co-operation between the trade unions and management in many factories. One can also see conciliation. There is direct involvement which could not have been foreseen a few years ago. It is there and it is working. It is wanted by the workers. Companies are flexible and are investing more and we are thus seeing the growth of change. It is this change and enterprise that the country was lacking for many years.
I do not wish to place the blame on the restrictive practices of the trade unions or on the management—it is a combined national disaster. We were too slow to realise how our competitors were changing. It is only recently, especially with Industry Year, that there is a recognition of the change which was needed in the industrial community. This was especially true of the trade unions. They had developed powers for all sorts of reasons which were too great to be harnessed properly. Therefore, although the majority of companies and trade unions worked well together there were some areas of difficulty. The major catastrophies which occurred in some of our major industries were due to the lack of control of some unions.
The right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), when discussing the Wapping dispute, uttered the words "under duress". He said that the workers were under duress. My goodness! One need only look back to industry of the 1960s to realise how many negotiations with unions were under duress. The only economic thing for managements to do was to concede. We now have a different balance. My example may not be good but, for goodness sake, we must encourage what we are witnessing in our trade union movement and in industry.
Many ordinary trade union members—not just those who have long experience of organising their unions—are relieved that legislation has come in. They now know where they stand and, if they take action, how far it is likely to spread. There will be no return to 1974 and the


presence of flying pickets at certain disputes. One of the great fears of trade unions involved in disputes is how far the dispute will spread and what damage it will do. Past disputes often got totally out of hand. The legislation we have brought in will give trade union members a choice. They may decide what action should be taken.
It is no surprise that the political levy was not wanted by many trade unions, but the option is there and has been chosen by some trade unionists. Members of unions will have a choice. They will not be controlled by those remote from them. They can control the union themselves. We are witnessing a great improvement—a direct involvement and participation. Such participation has been achieved by Government measures such as privatisation and employers buying in as well as the co-operation between management and employees. Surely, Opposition Members should be looking to develop further that process of integration between employer and employee. We talk of Japan getting it right because the work force is involved, but the same is happening in other countries. We have been a bit slow.
The greatest danger to industrial relations is not the trade union movement or legislation but the rhetoric of Opposition Members. They are the greatest proponents of the supposedly easy way out. They argue that if people have all manner of rights thrown at them they can dictate what they want. Many other factors dictate what they can get. People realise that we need change and appreciate that the Government have provided training facilities and encouraged investment in new technologies, and increased budgets accordingly. People will also recognise the false promises of Opposition Members for what they are. Giving rights does not create jobs. The jobs are created by working together.

Mr. Frank Cook: That does not happen now.

Mr. Stevens: It is happening, and more than some Opposition Members like to realise.

Mr. Cook: Where?

Mr. Stevens: I congratulate some parts of the trade union movement, which have taken it upon themselves to get involved with retraining. They are encouraging members, whether in or out of work, to increase their skills in new technologies, for example, or just to broaden their skills. The unions are doing that in co-operation with and backed by employers and the Government. I am sure that we shall use those skills, but Opposition Members merely attack such participation. They believe in restoring power to groups of people who are isolated from the day-to-day work. That policy failed before, and it will fail again. The balance is better now than it has been for years.

Mr. Don Dixon: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) on his success in the ballot and on his choice of wording in the motion. He and I know the sharp end of trade unionism as we were both shop stewards in the shipbuilding industry. For a long time we were chairman and vice-chairman of a shop stewards' committee, so we know a little about what we are talking about in regard to workers' rights and trade union rights.
Listening to the Minister, one wonders what is happening. When we consider what he said the Government have done to create jobs since 1979, we must

wonder what the 4 million unemployed think. People in my area believe that he will have to stop giving help as it seems to be getting them nowhere.
The motion speaks of anti-trade union policies. In that regard we have to go back to 1978, not 1979, when a committee under the chairmanship of the present Secretary of State for Transport, comprising top Tories, sat to decide how to deal with trade unions when a Conservative Government were elected. The report suggested hitting strikers financially, a national police force and getting non-union lorry drivers to get supplies across picket lines. Every part of that report was put into operation during the miners' strike.
Under section 6 of the Social Security Act 1980, for the first time since 1896, the dependants of strikers can be penalised if the breadwinner in the family decides to go on strike. Under that Tory legislation I would advise anyone who is working that, if they want to look after their families and get the full benefits under social security they should not go to work and ballot for a strike. They would be better off going to work and shooting the manager because by doing so, they would be sent to gaol and the state would look after a worker's dependants. However, if a worker goes to work, votes in a ballot and goes on strike, he will suffer a £16 deduction.
Apart from Tory legislation, the way in which public authorities have dealt with strikers has also caused problems. During the miners' strike the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food returned from Europe after discussing milk quotas. The National Farmers Union was not happy with the Government's position. At the same time there was a milk race at Aberystwyth. The farmers barricaded the roads with their Land Rovers and tractors but the policemen helped the cyclists to cross the barricades. Not one farmer was arrested and yet, just down the road, miners on picket lines were arrested for stepping off the pavement and on to the road.
The Prime Minister went to Swansea to address a Tory conference. Again there was a protest and demonstration about the milk quotas outside the venue and the Prime Minister was hit by an egg. No one was arrested for that, yet miners and miners' wives were arrested on the picket lines simply for shouting "scab". The Oppostion are, therefore, not solely concerned with Tory legislation. We are also concerned with the way that the public authorities deal with one set of workers as against another set.
My hon. Friends have mentioned the Employment. Act 1982. As you will recall, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you and I served on the Committee on that Bill. Clauses 1 and 2 of that Bill were introduced by the former Secretary of State for Employment, the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit). The right hon. Member spoke about neutering the trade unions through that legislation and the Prime Minister at that time spoke about the trade unions as the enemy within. That is why Government policy has motivated the present employment and trade union legislation.
Sections 1 and 2 of the Trade Union Act 1984 allocate £2 million for the free-riders, scabs and blacklegs and those who would not join a closed shop union. The then Secretary of State set that sum aside for those free-riders.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) referred to the miners' strike. During that strike the Minister came to the Dispatch Box and asked why the miners would not accept the findings of the independent review board. The Minister believed that all the miners'


problems would disappear if they would accept the recommendations. However, since the board was set up a situation has arisen in Northumberland where a recommendation that Bates colliery should be kept open has been overturned by the National Coal Board which has decided to close it. So much for the Minister suggesting that the mineworkers should accept the suggestions of the independent review board.
My hon. Friends have referred to the Wages Bill. We have heard a peculiar explanation from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State about that Bill and the waiving of the Truck Acts, for example, that defend workers' rights to have payments in cash or cheque. That right is to be denied. People under the age of 21 are being removed from the care of the wages council. Britain is the first of the 94 nations that are signatories to ILO convention 26 to deratify on that proposal. When the Wages Bill received the Royal Assent, youngsters will start work and be sacked when they are 21. They will be paid a pittance from the time they start work until they are paid off.
The Wages Bill also deals with redundancy payments. Certain firms are already fetching redundancies forward before the Bill reaches the statute book. In future any employer who employs more than 10 men will claim nothing from the central redundancy fund. They want to be able to claim from the central redundancy fund and so they are bringing forward redundancies.
The motion is about trade union rights and members of unions having the right to work and to be treated like human beings. Trade unionists do not want any special treatment. They do not want to be mollycoddled by employers. They want the right to work and to negotiate and they do not want those rights to be taken away from them by means of Government legislation.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, North on introducing the motion and I congratulate also all my right hon. and hon. Friends who have participated in the debate, who have spoken with knowledge of working people.

Mr. Sydney Chapman: As someone who has had the privilege of listening to every minute of this albeit short debate, I am grateful for being called to participate in it, especially as the chance of the second motion on the Order Paper being reached this afternoon has now been extinguished.
I join hon. Members on both sides of the House in congratulating the hon. Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans) on his good luck in the ballot, on introducing the motion and on raising a most important issue that is concerned centrally with employment rights. The House cannot accept that employment rights should be seen in isolation, and the full terms of the motion underline that.
I wish to talk about employment responsibilities. I accept that the Government have such responsibilities, but so, too, do employers, trade unions and employees. The central and principal responsibility of the Government is to try to promote a framework which is conducive to encouraging maximum employment. It is also their duty to hold the ring between the rights and responsibilities of employers and those of employees. There is no doubt that the Government have a duty as well to hold the ring and

ensure that there is a fair balance between the rights of trade unions and employees and members of individual unions.
I contend that recent employment legislation has redressed the balance and set it where it should be. Before that happened, far too much overweening power was held by trade unions. It is not an exaggeration to talk about the Tamanny hall trade unionism of some union leaders.

Mr. Frank Cook: Name them.

Mr. Chapman: I have heard nothing from Opposition Members about the rights of the public in a trade union dispute. I do not deny that there should be a legislative framework of employees' rights, but the House must deal carefully with any legislation in that area, from whatever Government it comes. We have the rights of our constituents to uphold, and we have the rights of the public to uphold as well. When there is an industrial dispute on the railway line that passes through my constituency, for example, surely the consumer, the person using the public transport, has his rights. It is our responsibility to defend those rights. That is part of a wider process of consideration, and the issue should not be confined to the narrow employment rights of employees.
When I hear what I might have to accept is the knee-jerk reaction of Mr. Rupert Murdoch and what he has done at Wapping, I take account of what has been said on both sides of the House in justification and opprobrium of Mr. Murdoch. Against that background, I ask: what about the anarchic blackmailing practices of sections of the trade unions throughout the 1960s, the 1970s and the first part of the 1980s, which destroyed vast parts of the organ of the fourth estate of our realm? What about the rights of the readership? What about the rights of free speech and free information? That is at least a part of the discussion in which we should be involved.
There is no doubt that in recent years industrialised countries have gone through one of those cyclical changes in employment that come about rarely. The industrialised world has gone through the worst recession in 50 years. If I had to name one incident that triggered off that recession, it would be the tripling of oil prices in 1979 and 1980. The right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), to whom I listened with great care and attention, who has great experience in employment policy pointed out that in 1979 and 1980 the number of people employed was the highest ever. The right hon. Gentleman might therefore accept that reduced employment is directly attributable to the world recession.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) said that Britain was an exporting nation. That was not a platitude. As he pointed out, 30 per cent. of our output is exported. We cannot divorce ourselves from what is happening in the world. We have to fight for our section of the world market. We must be competitive. If we are not, our people will lose their jobs.
With all the traumas, dramas and difficulties we have experienced in the first six years of this decade, I believe that our best prospect in the remaining part of the decade and beyond depends upon the enviable trio we have at present — steady growth, low inflation and improved output.
The problem is fundamentally caused by the high level of unemployment, but there are also record numbers of people seeking employment. As my hon. Friend the


Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Fonnan) pointed out, in the past three years the number of people in employment has increased by 700,000. The reason is not only the baby boom in the 1960s, which has meant that more and more people are entering the job market, but social trends. An increasing number of women are not prepared, rightly, to stay working full-time at home. They are seeking jobs and making a great contribution to the economy. Many women are seeking part-time jobs.
It is all very well for parliamentarians to comment on what is right or wrong about Government policy, but we owe it to the people to be constructive and to make suggestions that will point the way ahead and encourage employment. The construction industry is still our greatest industry, whether measured in terms of manpower or of output. I dare to mention that industry because, generally speaking, it provides employment on a large scale and is labour intensive.
We know the amount of money that needs to he spent on the fabric of our nation. Hardly a speech goes by in any debate without mention of the need to spend more on our infrastructure. There is not the remotest possibility of all that necessary work being provided by public funds. If the Government increased the amount of public funds for capital investment in the nation's fabric, they would set off the old, dreary well worn path of increased inflation, which would ultimately lead to more and more having to be spent to achieve less and less. The key to success in the construction industry must be to attract more and more private investment.

It being half past Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES (PROMOTION) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 21 March

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, at the sitting on Monday 10th March, the Motion in the name of Mr. John Biffen relating to Privileges may be proceeded with, though opposed, until half-past Eleven o'clock or for one and a half hours after it has been entered upon, whichever is the later, and if proceedings thereon have not been disposed of by that hour Mr. Speaker shall put the Question on any Amendment which may have been moved, and shall then put forthwith the Question on any other Amendments selected by him which may then be moved, and on the Main Question or the Main Question, as amended.—[Mr. Biffen.]

Hon. Members: Object.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That, at the sitting on Tuesday 11th March,—

(1) The provisions of paragraph (1)(b) of Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted business) shall not apply to the Motion in the name of the Prime Minister relating to European Community Shipping Policy or to the Motion relating to the Local Government (Temporary Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Order 1986; and
(2) Mr. Speaker shall put any Questions necessary to dispose of the first Motion not later than three hours after it has been entered upon, and shall put the Question on the second Motion not later than one and a half hours after it has been entered upon.—[Mr. Biffen.]

Hon. Members: Object.

Bates Colliery

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Archie Hamilton.]

Mr. John Ryman: I wish to raise the decision of the National Coal Board to close Bates colliery in Blyth. I am astonished that the Secretary of State for Energy is not on the Treasury Bench to answer on behalf of the Government. He had ample notice—more than a week ago—that this debate was to take place. He has been personally involved in many negotiations with the members of the local authority and members of the coal mining unions in relation to this matter. He knows the important principle involved in this subject, because it is the first occasion upon which the recommendation of an independent colliery review tribunal has been specifically rejected by the National Coal Board. In those circumstances I am astonished that the Secretary of State is not here, because he, not the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, was present during some of the negotiations. The only natural inference to draw from that is that the Government do not consider a pit closure of this proportion to be important enough to bring the Secretary of State to the House on a Friday afternoon. No doubt he has other more frivolous pursuits to follow.
The facts of the case surrounding the proposed closure of the colliery are well known. This colliery, in Northumberland, used to employ 2,000 men. That number was later reduced to 1,700 and then to 1,400, and, by agreement with the NCB, it now employs about 880 men. There are 29 million tonnes of high-quality workable reserves. Production at the mine is better than it has ever been. The agreed evidence of the technical expert before the tribunal was that there are no insuperable technical problems to be overcome in the further working of the pit.
The recommendation of the chairman of the tribunal was that the plan of Mr. Bulmer, one of the engineers, should be accepted, that the pit should be kept open for at least another two years and that, within those two years, it would become a viable proposition mining high-quality coal and producing it in larger and larger quantities. That is the background to the case.
One has to look further back to see what has happened. The starting point is the autumn of 1984 when the National Association of Colliery Ovenmen, Deputies and Shotfirers made an agreement with the NCB about the setting up of the tribunal.
The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Energy answered questions in the House in February 1985. In answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock), both specifically said that the agreement between NACODS and the NCB was "sacrosanct". ft is interesting to note that although the Government, as long ago as late 1984 and early 1985, were saying that the agreement was "sacrosanct", now that the recommendation has been made to keep the pit open, their view has changed.
To complete the picture, in June 1985 the Secretary of State for Energy personally met me, representatives of the coal-mining unions and the constituency, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy and representatives from the local authority. At that time negotiations were going on between the NUM and the NCB about whether the colliery review procedure could


be established between the other unions in the coal-mining industry and the NCB. The meeting was held in the room of the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), who was then a member of the Government, because the room of the Secretary of State was not large enough. We spent an hour and a half, having seen Mr. MacGregor the chairman of the NCB, earlier that day, and, on the whole, discussion ranged round the new colliery review procedure. The clear recollection of everybody in that room representing the coal-mining unions and local authorities was that the Secretary of State for Energy repeated that once the tribunal had been set up and the review procedure conducted, a decision by means the review procedure would be binding on the Government and the NCB.
In October 1985 a long meeting was held at the Department of Energy in the room of the Secretary of State. That meeting was attended by some Labour Members from the northern group, the president of the Northumberland area NUM, my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Orme) and me. The Secretary of State was obviously in a hurry because he was on his way to the Conservative party conference, but he had the courtesy to see us. I remember it clearly, as it was the week after the Labour party conference.
We have the minutes of that meeting, which took place on a Friday, in our possession, and the undisputed evidence was that negotiations for the new colliery review procedure were progressing well. At one stage the Secretary of State left the room to make a telephone call to Hobart house and he expected that agreement would be drawn up soon. He was right. The new agreement was drawn up within a couple of weeks. On that occasion, the clear impression given by the Secretary of State was, once again, that the Government and the NCB would respect the decision and recommendation of the independent colliery review tribunal.
What happened? The members of the tribunal were appointed, headed by an eminent judge, a law lord, and six eminent members of the Bar—all senior silks with great experience. Early in January 1986 the hearings began. Before they began, the preliminary hearing took place to decide the procedure and documentation. The hearing on Bates colliery took several days. Documents had been submitted in advance, and each side was permitted to call oral evidence, to make submissions and to cross-examine witnesses called by the other side. The evidence was heard by Mr. Peter Bowsher, QC, and it lasted for more than two days. Every opportunity was given to the NCB to adduce any evidence that it wanted. A similar concession was made to the coal-mining unions and to Blyth Valley council.
A mass of evidence was produced. The documentary evidence was examined and the oral evidence was cross-examined. Lengthy legal submissions were made, and Mr. Peter Bowsher, having analysed the evidence, carefully made a report which ran to many pages. It was a careful analysis of the evidence. Paragraph 7 of his final conclusions makes it clear that he accepted the case put forward by the unions and by Blyth Valley council, and that he rejected the evidence of the National Coal Board. His strong recommendation, made in detail, was that the colliery should remain open for at least two years. He thought that if it remained open for two years on the

Bulmer plan, it would prosper even more. That recommendation was issued on 4 February and considered by the NCB that week. On 20 February, the NCB said that it did not accept the recommendation of the tribunal and would close the colliery.
Those are the undisputed facts. The first thing that emerges from that—one wishes to be entirely accurate about the matter — is that the Government have completely broken faith with the coal-mining unions in Northumberland and with the local authority and that the Secretary of State for Energy has completely broken faith with me. In June 1985, he made the remarks to me which I have described, which were entirely inconsistent with his conduct in February 1986. The only inference to be drawn from that is that he was not being frank with me in June 1985, or that a more sinister reason influenced his actions in February 1986. There is no other logical explanation.
The next matter that emerges is that Mr. MacGregor and Mr. Archibald, who is the director of the north-east region, are on record as having said many times, orally and in writing, that, once the recommendation was made, the NCB would give full weight to it. What does the phrase "full weight" mean? It cannot mean ignoring the recommendation. When the board rejected the recommendation, it gave no full reasons for doing so. Mr. MacGregor made off-the-cuff comments to a few Conservative students in Nottingham, saying that the board was rejecting the suggestions of the independent colliery review procedure. They were not suggestions; they were recommendations. The coal board had said previously that the recommendations would be fully considered and that full weight would be given to them.
It is no wonder that the Secretary of State for Energy does not have the guts to be here this afternoon. He has flunked it completely. When I asked him many times during Energy Question Time what the Government's attitude was, he shrugged his shoulders and, with his usual nonchalant incompetence, said, "It is nothing to do with the Government. I am the Secretary of State for Energy. These matters are entirely for the National Coal Board."
Yesterday, and on Tuesday, the Prime Minister said that the decisions were entirely a matter for the National Coal Board. As long ago as February 1985, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister were saying that the decisions would be binding and sacrosanct, but now they shrug their, shoulders and say that it has nothing to do with the Government, but is entirely a matter for the NCB. the deputy chairman of the NCB was a permanent secretary at the Department of Energy, while the present Secretary of State was in office—an unhappy coincidence.
The present position requires robust thinking and careful analysis. Unless the Government change their mind and accept that they are responsible for our coal mining industry, and unless the NCB changes its mind, the colliery will die. With it will die the jobs of 880 men, the economy of Blyth and the coalmining community. The National Coal Board smugly and arrogantly says that there will be no compulsory redundancies, but that is a lie because there are not enough jobs in Northumberland to transfer 880 men and the pits at Ellington and Ashington cannot possibly absorb that manpower.
One is slow to make allegations unless they can be proved, because wild and unfounded allegations are too often made in the House. Having considered the matter very carefully and examined all the documents, however, and having studied the transcripts of all the broadcasts by


Mr. MacGregor and Mr. Archibald, there is no other way to describe their conduct except to say that they were thoroughly dishonest. They were dishonest with the coalmining community, they were dishonest with the people of Northumberland and they were probably dishonest with the Government.
I still have friends at Hobart house and at Team Valley and of course I respect the confidence of my sources, but in my respectful submission there is great unease both at Hobart house and at Team Valley about the conduct of the directors of the NCB. The unease is not confined to the coalmining community but spreads to headquarters staff who have seen the dishonest conduct of directors determined to crush a coalmining community in the north-east of England in a vengeful and spiteful vendetta which arose in the aftermath of the miners' strike. That accusation is justified by the evidence. In the financial year before the miners' strike £2 million was invested in Bates colliery. What was the point of investing that amount if it was intended to close the colliery so soon afterwards?
Those are the facts. Let us now see what can be done because we must work together to achieve a prosperous coal mining industry.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: rose—

Mr. Ryman: I will give way in a moment. We should work together to increase productivity, which has already increased enormously at Bates colliery, which is an efficient, well-conducted mine producing more and more high-quality coal each week. The productivity figures are excellent. Why do the Government wish to bury a mine with 29 million tonnes of coal under the sea when, according to the colliery review, it will be in profit within two years? What a waste of investment, of skill, of coal and of humanity.

Mr. Skinner: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me a couple of minutes in the debate.
I believe that the Government and the National Coal Board connived to delude the miners, and especially the deputies in their ballot in 1984. The whole British coalfield could have been brought to a standstill, so a way round the problem had to be found. One way round it was the colliery review procedure. That procedure was adopted little knowing that well-intentioned people like my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Ryman), who has constantly raised the matter in the House, would be able to convince the tribunal that the pit was a decent pit and should be kept open. The Government and the National Coal Board never expected to have to face the music in an instance such as this. My hon. Friend has explained that the colliery is worth keeping open, that it is viable and that it has reserves. He has explaned how it was subject to a con at the time. Much spleen and vindictiveness is poured on the miners at Bates and the north-east area because MacGregor wants to prove to the Prime Minister and to the Secretary of State for Energy that he is running the show, whatever decent people think. My hon. Friend has an outstanding case. He is to be congratulated on continuing to inform the House. I hope that he succeeds. I hope that NACODS, the deputies' union, will achieve a majority in the ballot and instead of running away from a decision, as it did last time, that it will act so that its members are able to repair the damage done in 1984.

Mr. Ryman: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). NACODS must get on with the job quickly. The matter is urgent. The preparation of salvage and the heightening of seams is going on now, so it is important that NACODS, which has much influence, makes it decision. It is no use behaving like Gebhard Blucher and arriving after the battle when the fight is over. The fight will continue in the House of Commons, in the coalmining industry and in the courts.
The Government have shirked their responsibility and broken their promises. They have lied to the people.
It does not matter how long the fight continues, we shall fight for the pit and its community. If we have to fight alone, so be it. But we shall not have to fight alone, because we shall be joined by all the coalmining unions, the TUC and other organisations. We are not fighting for Bates alone. We are fighting the Government on their pit closure policy.
At one time there were 200,000 miners in Britain. The Government want to get rid of 50,000 of them. We are fighting for the coalfields throughout the country—for the collieries in the north, south Wales and Kent. We are fighting for the survival of coalmining communities throughout England, Scotland and Wales.
We are convinced that, as the oil runs out, coal reserves will be the prime source of energy. What a panic there was about the drop in oil prices recently. It is essential to have an efficient and viable coalmining industry.
If the Government had the strength they could tell Mr. MacGregor "Keep that pit open, as the recommendation advises." The Government and their Ministers do not have the courage, the integrity or the will to exercise their responsibilities. I do not want to be personally abusive about Mr. MacGregor. I do not have to be, because his conduct describes itself. Mr. MacGregor did not even read the recommendation in full. He acted against it without considering it in detail.
The Secretary of State for Energy is answerable to Parliament for the administration of the industry, although he is not responsible for day-to-day management because of constitutional convention. Why does he lack the courage to say to Mr. MacGregor, "Reconsider. You might come to the same conclusion, but reconsider the report and the recommendations. Reconsider the deputations; reconsider what Members of Parliament and the experts say." The National Coal Board's own experts, the technical engineers, say that the pit is technically all right, that it contains good quality coal and that it would be viable within two years.
Surely nobody is so arrogant or conceited that he does not have the humility and understanding to say, "Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I made a hasty decision. Let us look at the matter again." I am asking the Government to look at the matter again. After the many representations made to them, the Government may know things that they did not know before.
The Under-Secretary came to the north-east coalfield many months ago and met miners from Bates colliery and gave them an assurance, which was not honoured. They gave him a plan for making the pit viable and he said that the closure would be reconsidered, but it never was. If the Minister has time to reply to the debate—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. The Minister will not have time if the hon. Gentleman keeps on.

Mr. Ryman: There it is. It is a long story and it has taken a long time to tell, but I am so familiar with the nauseating, pompous platitudes that emanate from the ministerial Bench about this matter that perhaps it is just as well that the Minister has not got long to reply.
The north-east of England has no confidence in the integrity of the Secretary of State for Energy and his Department. We do not believe what he says, we do not trust him and we do not consider that his words are worth anything. I have to say that frankly to the Under-Secretary. I am sorry that he is having to carry the can for his incompetent senior colleague.
In this disgraceful state of affairs I speak for the coal industry in the north-east and throughout the country. It has suffered from the ferocious policies of the Thatcher Government — the Walker incompetence, the Joseph indifference and the cruelty towards the coal mining community and in all other spheres of Government.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. David Hunt): I congratulate the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Ryman) on securing an opportunity to debate the future of Bates colliery, but I repudiate completely his ungenerous, incorrect and uncharacteristically discourteous remarks about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and myself.
I know that the hon. Gentleman has been diligent on behalf of his constituents in relation to the future of the colliery. He mentioned a number of meetings that have taken place, but I recall clearly that my right hon. Friend made it clear that decisions on individual closures were entirely a matter for the NCB.
The hon. Gentleman said that wild allegations were often made in the House, and this debate has been an extreme example of that. The hon. Gentleman made some outrageous and absurd allegations about dishonesty by the chairman, the area directot and others. I also repudiate allegations made by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner).
Surely the hon. Member for Blyth Valley knows that even now the procedures used in reaching the decision to close Bates colliery are the subject of an application for judicial review in the High Court.

Mr. Ryman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The junior Minister has committed a grave error of judgment in mentioning a subject that is obviously sub judice. The High Court is sitting at this minute hearing matters about which the Minister knows full well.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I sought guidance on this matter before the debate started and I understand that Mr. Speaker's considered judgment is that in the circumstances the sub judice rule would not inhibit the debate.

Mr. Hunt: I was saying—

Mr. Ryman: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have already ruled.

Mr. Ryman: It is a fresh point.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have already ruled.

Mr. Ryman: It is a fresh point.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We draw stumps in three minutes.

Mr. Ryman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The debate is clearly inhibited. Proceedings are going on at this minute, but there is a discretion—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is the precise point on which I have ruled.

Mr. David Hunt: The hon. Member for Blyth Valley appeared to be implying that it is not for the NCB to take decisions about the future of collieries. It clearly is. The board has carefully considered this case. The hon. Member mentioned the recommendations of Mr. Bowsher and said that the pit would make a profit in two years. But conclusion No. 1 from Mr. Bowsher's report said:
There is no evidence that Bates colliery will ever make a profit.
It would be far better if he were to turn his attention to trying to secure new jobs in the area and to join National Coal Board (Enterprise) Ltd. in trying to create new industry and new jobs. There is a great future for the coal industry in the long-life, productive pits of the north-east, but the National Coal Board has decided that Bates colliery cannot form part of that future.
I hope that the hon. Member for Blyth Valley will put this episode behind him and instead turn his considerable energies and abilities towards bringing, perhaps in conjunction with National Coal Board (Enterprise) Ltd., alternative employment to his constituency. That company has already accomplished a great deal in the north-east. There is much more to be done. Nearly 5,000 job opportunities have already been created, over 480 of them in the north-east. That is the way forward for the Bates colliery community.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Three o'clock.